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DUTCH PICTURES. 



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DUTCH PICTURES; 



Withfome Sketches in the Flemijh Manner. 



GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA, 

Author of " William Hogarth ;" the " Seven Sons oj 

Mammon" " A Journey Due North ;" "Twice 

Round the Clock ;" Sfr., fife. 



Vidi tantum 



LONDON : 

I TINSLEY BROTHERS, 

CATHERINE STREET, STRAND. 
1861. 






W. OSTELL, PRINTER, 
HART STREET, BLOOMSBURY. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

PREFACE Vii 

I. 

THE SHADOW OF A DUTCH PAINTER ... 1 

II. 

THE SHADOW OE DAT AND NIGHT - - - 15 

III. 
OUR DOUBLES 23 

IV. 

THE GOLDEN CALF 35 

Y. 

■A NEW RAILWAY LINE 51 

YI. 

WANT PLACES 66 

YIL 

MORE PLACES WANTED 90 

VIII. 

OLD LADIES ' - - - - HO 

IX. 

LITTLE CHILDREN 123 



VI 



Contents. 



PAGE. 

X. 

THE CONVERSION OF COLONEL QUAGG - - - - 137 

XI. 

DEMETRIUS THE DIVER 160 

XII. 

THE CAPTAIN'S PRISONER, A STORY OF THE '45 - - 173 

XIII. 

DOCTOR PANTOLOGOS .... - 191 

XIV. 

TRAVELS IN SEARCH OE BEEF 211 

XV. 

FURTHER TRAVELS IN SEARCH OF BEEF - - - -222 

XVI. 

THE METAMORPHOSED PAGODA 243 

XVII. 

THE LAND OF NOD, A KINGDOM OF RECONCILED IMPOSSI- 
BILITIES - - - 265 

XVIII. 

TWENTY MILES - - 276 

XIX. 

LITTLE SAINT ZITA — A CULINARY LEGEND - 291 

XX. 

FIRST FRUITS - 310 

XXI. 

OLD CLOTHES 321 



PREFACE. 



C~^Q^yHdi^^&^» 



On the Batavian School of Delineation. 

I think that of would-be epigramatic, alliterative, or 
simply clap-trap titles to books, we have had, of late 
years, satiety. Am I, in calling my volume "Dutch 
Pictures," adding but one more " taking " title to the 
list? Can "Dutch Pictures" have any more real 
meaning or significance than "Sand and Shells/' 
"Patchwork," "Odds and Ends," "Olla Podrida," 
" Waifs and Strays," " Bubble and Squeak," or " Gam- 
mon and Spinach?" I hope to prove that I have had 
a definite object in attaching to these papers their 
present title, and that it is not, after all, grossly 
inappropriate. 

I put " Dutch Pictures " at the head of my page 
for these reasons. Pirst, because, unless I am much 
mistaken, the Batavian painters of the seventeenth 
century were remarkable for their careful delineation 



via 



Preface. 



of the minutest objects in nature, animate and inani- 
mate, bestowing infinite pains on the reproduction of, 
or the shadows and reflections in, pots and pans, — of 
the twigs in a birch-broom, of the texture of a carpet 
or a curtain, of the fat and lean of a loin of pork, of 
the knitted stockings of a fraw, of the red nose of a 
boor, of the peelings of carrots and turnips, of the 
plumage of a bird, of the veins in a cabbage, of the 
smoke from a tobacco-pipe. Next, because I have endea- 
voured, perhaps unsuccessfully, but always laboriously, 
to imitate with the pen what these ingenious artists 
have done with the pencil, and to bring to the descrip- 
tion of the men and the manners of the times in which 
I have lived that minuteness — it may be pettiness of 
observation — which makes every Dutch Picture, to the 
meanest, curious, if not excellent. Let me not be 
mistaken by critics. There are Dutchmen and Dutch- 
men. There are the Teniers, the Gerard Douws, the 
Ostades, and the Metzus — the great makers of minutise,. 
but surpassingly gifted likewise in skilful draughtsman- 
ship, in harmonious composition, in brilliant colour, 
in delicate texture, in exquisite finish. Such admirable 
exemplars answer, perhaps, to our Goldsmiths, our 
Lambs, our Leigh Hunts, and our Washington Irvings. 
I will name no living writer for fear of being howled at. 
But there are Dutch painters of the second, the third, 



Preface. 



IX 



and the fourth rank. There are the Wouvermans', the 
Micris', the Breughels ; there are, lower still, the Jan 
Steens and the Schkalkens ; there are the Weenix's, the 
Van Huysums, the Yanvoorsts, and the Steenwycks. 
There may be mentioned, again, the jolly Jordaens, and 
the coarse but brilliant Adrian Brouwer. When the 
pearly tints of a Teniers, the wonderful light and shade 
of an Isaac Ostade, the matchless manipulation* of a 
Gerard Douw, are almost beyond price, collectors and 
curiosity-hunters can yet find a word of praise, and a 
corner in their cabinets, for the inferior works of the 
Dutch school — not gems, intaglios, or enamels, cer- 
tainly, but rather buttons, and quaint carved toys, and 
tradesmen's tokens of art, which give them, so far as 
the limited capacity, but untiring industry, of the 
Dutchman went, his notion of the interior of a school- 
room, the economy of a kitchen, the jollity of a tavern, 
or the humours of a Jcermesse. What scenes analogous 
to those just mentioned I have witnessed at home or 
abroad, I have attempted to draw with pen and ink, 
slowly and carefully, in the Dutch manner; and if I 

* I use the long word in preference to " handling," because 
the latter has been degraded and distorted by Art critics, who 
speak of mere coarse dash and vigour in a picture as " handling," 
whereas by " manipulation," I mean the pains-taking work of 
the pencil wielded by a highly educated hand. 



x Preface, 

have failed, it has been for lack of power, and not of 
will, or toil. 

A favourite device adopted now a-days by those 
whose business it is to dissect a book, is to ask the 
author his reasons for writing, for publishing,, or for 
republishing it. There is no easier cry than cui bono ? 
and the response is not so very difficult. There is a 
story told of Mr. John Cooper the tragedian — who is 
facetiously supposed to be many hundred years old — 
stating that he once asked William Shakspeare why he 
drank so much soda-water and sal-volatile, to which the 
bard tranquilly replied, "Because I like it, John." I 
might retort, were I asked my reasons for putting forth 
these old pictures, of which the majority originally ap- 
peared in " Household Words" between the years 1851 
and 1856, inclusive, and which are now reprinted by 
permission of Mr. Charles Dickens, that to do so suits 
my humour, my vanity, or my interest ; but I have two 
more reasons, less egotistical and perhaps as valid. I 
wrote the stories in this book with the purpose of amus- 
ing my readers, and I hope that those who read them 
may derive some amusement from them now. I wrote 
the sketches and essays as studies of the manners I saw 
around me, and with the idea that they might not be 
without some interest when those manners had passed 
away. Both stories and sketches may be disfigured by 



Preface. xi 

errors of style, by involved and confused language, by 
repetitions, by inaccuracies, and by verbal affectations, 
involuntary, but not the less offensive. With respect 
to such blemishes, I have but one plea to offer, and to 
repeat — that there are Dutchmen and Dutchmen, and 
that to all painters are not given the magic coup-d'ceil 
of Ostade, the unerring touch of Teniers. 

I have heard that a politician once declared that had 
he not been bred up to the Quaker persuasion, he would 
surely have been a prizefighter. It is probable that, 
had I not drifted into authorship, I should have been a 
broker's man. I can even remember in early life once 
"taking stock" in a theatrical wardrobe, and once 
making out the Christmas bills for a fashionable tailor ; 
and I can recall the delight with which, in a neat round 
hand, I expatiated upon " one demon's dress, complete," 
" six page's tunics and tights," and again upon " one 
best superfine Saxony broad cloth frock-coat, with silk 
sleeve and skirt lining, buttons and binding." On that 
same art of inventory-making, and stock-taking, I still 
take my stand. "Whatever success I have to be thank- 
ful for in a life of incessant and painful labour — never 
without censure, seldom relieved by encouragement or 
praise — pursued in sickness and sorrow, in poverty and 
obscurity, has been due to the pen and the inkhorn of 
the inventory-maker, to persistence in describing the 



xii Preface. 

things I have seen, and to a habit of setting down the 
common things I have thought about them : exactly as 
they have been presented to me, and exactly as they 
have occurred. 



GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. 



Upton Couht, Bucks, 
September, 1861. 



DUTCH PICTURES 



z^^ 



I. 



THE SHADOW OF A DUTCH PAINTER. 



YELLOW, thumbed, devastated by flies and time, stained 
with spots of oil and varnish, broken-backed, dog's- 
eared — a sorry, lazar-house copy, which no bookstalUkeeper 
would look at, and at which the meanest of buttermen would 
turn up his nose — I have a book which I love. It is the 
Reverend Mr. Pilkington, his Dictionary of Painters. You 
know it, oh ye amateurs of the fine arts, seeking to verify 
the masters and the dates of your favourite canvasses ! You 
know it, ye industrials of Cawdor Street, for it is your grand 
book of reference, when your journeyman artist Smith, only 
recently emancipated from limning " Red Lions," and making 
" Bulls " radiant with gold leaf, and then painting a Holy 
Family and affixing thereto the signature (pious fraud !) of 
Dominichino or Zurbaran, runs the risk, if to the signature 

B 



2 Dutch Pictures. 

he adds a date, of making a slight mistake in chronology, 
and dating his work fifty years or so before the painter's birth, 
or after his death. I have seen, ere now, an original Eem- 
brandt (with a flourish to the E at which the boldest of scep- 
tics wonld not dare to cavil), dated 1560. I know my Pil- 
kington well, and of old, and I love it, for it is full of Shadows. 
I can keep good shadowy company with it; now with the 
cream — the E. A.'s of the old masters : Titian in the 
Mocenigo Palace receiving his pencil from the hands of 
Charles the Fifth, with a condescending bow ; Enbens riding 
abroad with fifty gentlemen in his train ; Eaffaelle lying in 
state, with princes and cardinals around, and his glorious 
Transfiguration at the bed-head; now, with the less promi- 
nent celebrities : jovial, clever, worthless Adrian Brouwer ; 
Gian Bellini, so meek, so mild, and so pious; honest Peter 
Claes, so great in painting pots and pans ; stolid old Dirk 
Stoop the battle painter. 

Turn again, Pilkingtoii, and let me summon the shadow 
of Peter de Laar. 

We are in Eome, in the year of grace sixteen hundred 
and twenty-three, and in a house in the Strada Vecchia. 
Light steals with no garish glitter, but with a chastened 
mellowed softness, through a solitary window into a grand 
old room. Not but what there are other windows, and large 
ones too : but they are all fastened and curtained up, that so 
much light as is needed, and no more, shall permeate into 
the painter's studio. Three large easels I see, and a smaller 
one, far off, in a corner, whereat a fair-haired boy is making 
a study, in chalk, from a plaster bust on a pedestal. There 
is a good store of old armour, old furniture, old tapestry 



The Shadow of a Dutch Painter. 3 

scattered about, and, above all, an old painted ceiling, where 
a considerable contingent from Olympus once disported 
themselves upon clouds, but are well nigh invisible now 
through clouds of dust and smoke from this lower earth. 
In revenge for their forced obscurity above, the gods and 
goddesses have descended to the shelves, where, in plaster, 
and wanting some of them a leg or an arm, they are as 
beautiful, and more useful than above. The Venus of Milo 
stands amicably side by side with Actseon and his dogs, 
while in strange proximity is the horned Moses of Michael 
Angelo. There is a'great velvet-covered silver-clasped book 
of " Hours " on a lectern of carved oak, and in an ebony 
cabinet, among strange poignards and quaint pieces of plate, 
are a few books : a copy of Livy with a passage kept open 
by an ivory rosary, some dog's-eared sketch-books, and a 
parchment-covered folio of St. Augustine's works, the mar- 
gins scrawled over with skeletons and fragments of men with 
muscles in violent relief. Nor are these last the only mus- 
cular decorations of the apartment. One shelf is entirely 
devoted to a range of phials, containing anatomical pre- 
parations sufficiently hideous to the view ; and there stands, 
close to a table where a serving lad with an eminently French 
face is grinding colours on a marble slab and humming an 
air the while, a horrible figure as large as life, from which 
the skin has been flayed off, showing the muscles and arteries 
beneath — a dreadful sight to view. It may be of wax or 
of plaster, but I would as soon not meet with it, out of a 
dissecting-room, or a charnel-house. A skeleton, too — the 
bones artistically wired together, and supported on a tripod 
— would show that the occupant of the apartment was not 

b 2 



4 Dutch Pictures. 

averse from the study of osteology. This skeleton has no 
head, the place thereof being supplied by a mask, a card- 
board " dummy " of a superlatively inane cast of beauty : 
the blue eyes and symmetrical lips (curved into an unmean- 
ing and eternal simper), the pink cheeks, and silken dolls' 
tresses, contrasting strangely with the terribly matter-of-fact 
bones and ligaments beneath — the moral to my lady's look- 
ing-glass. This room might belong to a surgeon who is 
fond of painting (for there are more bones, and one or two 
real grinning skulls about), or to a painter who is fond of 
surgery ; for the anatomical drawings which crowd every 
vacant place, which are scrawled on the walls and furniture 
in chalk and charcoal and red cinnabar, bear trace of a 
masterly eye and of an experienced hand. If the apartment 
be the habitation of a painter, however, he is no poet, no 
admirer of music, no gallant devoted to gay clothes, or de- 
lighting to serenade noble dames; for through the length 
and breadth of the studio I can catch no glimpse of lute, or 
plumed hat, or velvet mantle trailing on a chair — of sprucely 
bound volume of Ariosto or Boccaccio, or, worse, of ribald 
Are tin, of soiled glove, or crushed rose-bud, or crumpled 
ribbon. The painter, if he be one, must be a grave, sedate 
cavalier, and so, of a truth, he is. No one yet accused 
Messire NICOLAS POUSSIN, to whom this studio belongs, 
of gallantry, or verse-making, or lute-twanging, or flower- 
seeking. He is a tall, well-made, personable gentleman, 
prematurely grey, and of a grave presence. He wears a 
justaucorps of black velvet, not quite innocent of paint-stains, 
and a well-worn cap of red silk sits on his crisp and curled 
locks. He carries palette on thumb and pencil in hand, 



The Shadow of a Dutch Painter. 5 

with which last he is busily calling up, on the canvass before 
him, a jovial, riotous, wine-bibbing, dishevelled crew of fauns 
satyrs, Bacchanals and Hamadryads, dancing, shouting, and 
leaping round a most disreputable-looking old Silenus, be- 
striding a leopard and very far gone in Grecian vintages. 

Anon, the fair-haired boy quits the "room, and, returning, 
announces that there is one below would speak with his mas- 
ter. The words are scarcely out of his mouth, when the 
stranger, of whom it is question, enters. With much creak- 
ing of shoes, and cracking of joints, and rustling of his brave 
garments, he advances to Poussin, and presents him with a 
packet of letters, which the painter receives with a grave 
reverence. This is Peter de Laar : here is his Shadow. 

Take Sancho Panza's head ; blend in the expression of the 
countenance the shrewd impudence of Gil Bias, the senten- 
tious yet saucy wit of Figaro, and the stolid humour of Mo- 
liere's Sganarelle, yet leave the close-cropped bullet skull, 
the swarthy tint, the grinning ivories, the penthouse ears and 
twinkling little eyes of the immortal governor of Barataria ; 
mount this head on a trunk combining the strength and mus- 
cular development of Buonarotti's torso, with the exuberant 
rotundity of Falstaff ; plant this trunk on the legs of Edward 
Longshanks, of the celebrated Mr. Carus Wilson, or of that 
member of the Daddy Longlegs family, whose inability or 
disinclination to perform his orisons led to his being precipi- 
tated down an indefinite number of stairs. Add to all this, 
arms always placed at distressingly eccentric angles to the 
body ; feet, the toes of which are always turned in the con- 
trary direction to that which they properly should be ; hands, 
with joints for ever cracking, with palms for ever smiting each 



6 Dutch Pictures. 

other, with, thumbs and fingers and wrists for ever combining 
themselves into strange gestures, into concentric balls of 
quaint humour ; a nose which, when blown, resounds like a 
Chaldean trumpet in the new moon; moustaches fierce as 
those of the Copper Captain, long as those of a Circassian 
chieftain, twisted upwards like those of Mephistopheles in the 
outlines of Moritz Eetsch. Cover this strange, joyous, bizarree, 
humourously awkward, quaint and goguenarde frame with 
habiliments so strangely cut, so queerly fashioned, of such 
staring colours, bespattered with such fantastic embroidery, 
that you know not whether to call them vulgar or picturesque, 
ridiculous or pleasing. Balance me this notable figure in 
any position out of his proper centre of gravity ; make him 
sit on tables, or on easels, or on wainscot ledges, till Master 
Poussin has courteously signalled an easy chair to him ; and 
even then let him sit on the back, the legs, the arms thereof, 
rather than sit as Christians are wont to repose. Let him do 
nothing as other men do ; let him have a voice the faintest 
vibration of which, before ever he utters a word, shall make 
you hold your sides with laughter ; let him have been born a 
low comedian, a mountebank, a merry-andrew, a jack- 
pudding, a live marionette, even as some men are born 
scoundrels, and some women queens. Let him have wit, 
talent, impudence (and monstrous impudence !), good-humour 
and versatility ; let him be a joyous companion, a firm friend, 
indifferently moral, questionably sober, and passing honest ; 
imagine him to be all these, and you have the shadow of Peter 
de Laar, the Dutch painter, better known in Pilkingtonian 
and auction room lore by the pseudonym given him by the 
Italians, with reference to his witty buffoonery, of II Bam- 
boccio. 



The Shadow of a Dutch Painter. 7 

Peter has come straight from dear old Amsterdam ; from 
the sluggish canals, the square-cut trees, the washing tub-like 
luggers and galliots, the parti-coloured houses, the clean flag- 
stones, tulip-beds, pictorial tiles, multifarious wind-mills, 
pagoda hay-stacks, pickled gherkins, linsey-woolsey petticoats, 
and fat, honest, stupid, kind Dutch faces of the City of the 
Dykes and the Dams, to Home. He has come as straight, 
moreover, as the governor of the Low Countries, as the police 
of M. de Richelieu in France, as a slender purse, and an in- 
veterate propensity to turn out of the beaten track wherever 
there were pretty faces, good wine, or good company to be 
found, would allow him to progress. He is come to study 
landscape painting in Italy, and has brought letters of intro- 
duction to Poussin, from persons of consideration both in 
Holland and Prance. The great French painter receives him 
with cordiality. Wine and meats are brought in. Presently 
enter two friends of Poussin, both painters : Monsieur San- 
drart, who has left but an unsubstantial shadow to us, and 
Monsieur Gelee, whose real appellation has also been forgot- 
ten, but who will live, I trust, as long as painting lives, under 
the title of Claude Lorraine. Peter de Laar.is introduced to 
these worthies. They talk of things literary, of things picto- 
rial, of the last scandal in the sacred college, of the last squib 
on the Corso, the last lampoon passed on Pasquin's statue, of 
the success of the Cavaliere Yandyck in England, of the pro- 
bable jealousy thereat of the Cavaliere Rubens ; of Gaspar 
Dughet — Nicolas's brother-in-law and pupil, who adopted his 
master's patronymic — and of his friendship with Albano. 
They are grave at first, but somehow Peter de Laar makes 
them all lau°:h. Then there are more wines and more meats, 



8 Dutch Pictures. 

and considerably more laughter. Suddenly, from no man 
knows whither, Peter produces a fiddle. He plays once, and 
twice, and thrice, and again. He plays the good old airs of 
Holland, such as Teniers' vrows dance to, and Ostade's boors 
nod lazily to, guzzling beer the while ; such as the lady in the 
satin dress of Honthorst plays so sweetly to the cavalier in 
buff boots ; such as the hurdygurdy players of Metzu and Jan 
Steen grind so piteously before cottage doors ; such as bring 
the tears into the eyes of the good company in the old house 
in the Strada Vecchia, though Peter de Laar be the only 
Dutchman present. 

Peter can paint, and paint well, besides playing on the 
fiddle. He has a pretty hand, too, for turning verses — the 
more satirical the better. He is a good classic and inimitable 
story-teller, and a practical joker unrivalled for invention and 
audacity. He can smoke like a Dutchman, as he is, and sing 
in madrigals, and do tricks of legerdemain wonderful to look 
at. He is come to spend three months among the beautiful 
Italian scenery, but how long do you think he stops ? Five 
years. Soon the grave and sedate Nicolas Poussin, soon the 
saturnine Claude Gelee, yclept Lorraine, began to find that 
they cannot do without the sprightly Dutchman. He fiddles, 
or touches the viol di gamba or the harpsichord, before they 
set to work of a morning ; he sings to them as he and they 
paint, or, while a tint is drying, or the sky is too overcast for 
him to paint the sunny landscapes by, he will throw his huge 
grotesque laugh-provoking limbs on a stool, and from one of 
the tomes in the ebon cabinet read forth in a bold strident 
voice the sounding prose of Livy that Master Poussin loves so 
well to listen to ; or he will " lisp in numbers," and clearing 



The Shadow of a Dutch Painter. 9 

away the dust and cobwebs from crabbed Basle or Haerlem 
Latin characters — call forth joy and merriment from Master 
Quintus Horatius Flaccus, and Master P. Virgilius Maro their 
repositories. 

But when work is over (Peter can work well and play 
well), it is then that his supple joints, his joyous face, his 
great hearty laugh come into full play. It is in the wine- 
shops, among the merry crowds on the Corso and the 
Pincian Hill, in moonlight junketings among the ruins of 
the Colliseum, in the gloomy Grhetto among the Jews, playing 
them roguish tricks, that he earns his surname of II Bam- 
boccio, that he becomes the idol and the glory of the Italian 
jokers and hoaxers. We have been too much accustomed to 
look at the Italians as a sentimental and romantic people ; 
yet, in pure fact, few nations possess so much of the comic vein 
A glance at the memoirs of Baldinucci, at the glorious reper- 
tory of hoaxes to be found in the Decameron, at the infinity of 
pantomimes, farces, and burlesques to which the little Vene- 
tian theatres gave birth ; or even at the buffooneries of that 
superlative literary rascal, Peter Aretino, would prove the 
contrary. Punch came from Italy, so did Toby ; so did har- 
lequin, columbine, clown, and pantaloon. Pancy the stealing 
of sausages and the animation of clock-faces to have had their 
origins in the clime of Dante and Petrarch, oh, ye Delia Crus- 
cans, and readers of Eosa Matilda novels ! If orchards were 
to be rifled, old ladies frightened, monks waylaid and enticed 
to drink strong waters till they went home intoning profane 
canticles to the great scandal of the monastic orders — who but 
II Bamboccio ? If tradesmen's signs were to be altered, names 
erased, obnoxious collectors of the salt-tax, to be tarred 



io Dutch Pictures, 

and feathered, or any other achievements to be accom- 
plished — who but II Bamboccio ? Like many practical jokers 
as famous, Peter de Laar not only enjoys the fame of what he 
does, but of a great deal of what he neither does do nor has 
any hand in doing. All the hoaxes, all the satires, all the 
practical jokes, all the caricatures, all the concetti, are credited 
to his account. Though he strenuously denies it, he is set 
down for certain as the heir-at-law to the celebrated Pasquin. 
If ever a pasquinade appears against a Cardinal, an epigram 
on a Monsignore, a couplet on love, politics, or divinity — who 
but II Bamboccio is fixed upon as the culprit ? 

Every evening, after the heat of the day, when the dust is 
laid and the cool breezes come in refreshingly from the Cam- 
pagna, the grandees of Eome come forth to walk on the Corso. 
Priests, gentles, noble ladies, cavalieri serventi and patiti, 
stately Cardinals in their coaches of scarlet and gold, drawn 
by eight mules a-piece, walk, ride, flirt, or decorously amble 
up and clown. There are smiles, and jests, and smart witti- 
cisms, and brilliant skirmishes of gallantry round the ladies. 
One Friday, in the year 1624, at the very height and fashion- 
able time of the promenade, a huge elderly ape, a white- 
headed, vicious, bushy-haired, villainous animal, which would 
be, perhaps, were he to stand upright, nearly as large as a 
man, appears at the further extremity of the Corso. Gravely 
he marches, looking slyly at the ladies under their veils, and 
grimacing horribly. Some laugh, some shriek, some cry that 
he has escaped from a menagerie. All at once, with an ap- 
palling scream and a chattering such as man never heard 
before, he stops opposite a richly-dressed lady, called La Par- 
queria, and, in defiance of all laws of politeness and etiquette, 



The Shadow of a Dutch Painter. 1 1 

gives her a round of kisses in amazingly rapid succession ; 
then, turning on his tail, flies and is seen no more. 

Now La Parqueria, I grieve to tell it, is rather more 
beautiful than good. Scandal, busy at Borne as elsewhere, 
says naughty things of her with reference to a certain Cardi- 
nal. Next day, on the statue of Pasquin appears a most 
abusive libel, called il bracciamento, in which, in reference to 
the occurrence of the day before, his Eminence the Cardinal 
is likened to an old ape. The affair makes a furious noise 
in Eome ; and our friend Bamboccio is generally believed to 
know more about it than he cares to aver. He drinks, and 
fiddles, and paints none the less, but he keeps his own coun- 
sel, goes home rather earlier of an evening, and never alone, 
and is heard to boast a good deal in public touching being 
cunning of fence. As for the poor Parqueria, so great is the 
hubbub and ridicule, that she is obliged to leave Home. At 
this time of day it would scarcely bring Peter de Laar within 
the range of the batteries of the Holy Inquisition to say that 
he is the guilty party, the real monkey, and the author of the 
libel as well. There is an obstinate old woman in Eome who 
is of the same opinion, and who avers, that with her proper 
eyes she saw the monkey assume the shape of Bamboccio, 
mount a horse, and gallop away at the top of his speed ; but 
she is at last persuaded that it was the devil she saw and not 
the Dutchman, and performs, in consequence, a Novena at 
the church of San Pancrazio. 

Pive years have nearly elapsed since Bamboccio's arrival 
at Eome, when he is one day agreeably surprised by the 
appearance of his brother, Eoeland de Laar, who brings with 
him two more young Dutchmen (and famous ones), John and 



i2 Dutch Pictures. 

Andrew Both, who are come to study landscape under Claude 
Lorraine. Eoeland has journeyed hither with the intention 
of taking his brother back to his native country ; but, after 
the manner of the hammer which was sent to fetch the chisel, 
and which, in turn, required the mallet to be sent after it, 
Bamboccio easily persuades his brother to stay in Kome, and 
the four painters agree to live merrily together. They take 
a roomy old house, and lead for upwards of a year the gayest, 
most jovial, yet most industrious bachelor life you can ima- 
gine. Alas, for the clouds that are so soon to overcast this 
fair sky ! 

One day, on a sketching excursion, and during Lent, 
after having filled their portfolios with sketches, they sit 
down by a running stream to eat their afternoon meal. The 
pie is good, and the wine is good, and the ample and hila- 
rious enjoyment thereof does them, so they think, good too. 
Not so, however, thinks a shaven monk with a white, cowled 
blanket lashed round his waist by a greasy rope, feet very 
picturesquely sandalled but leaving something to be desired 
in the way of cleanliness, a thin lip, and an evil eye. He 
takes the artists roundly to task for eating meat in Lent, and 
threatens nothing less than to denounce them to the ecclesi- 
astical authorities ; whereupon Bamboccio abuses him with 
much humorous virulence. 

"For a fellow," says Peter, "who recommends absti- 
nence, you keep no Lent in wine, Father Baldpate, to judge 
by your ruby snout." 

" Wine, in moderation, is sent by Providence for the use 
of man," answers the monk, sententiously. 

" And water wherewith to dilute it," cries Bamboccio, 



The Shadow of a Dutch Painter. 13 

with an ominous glance at the running stream. " Did you 
ever do penance, old shaveling ? " 

" When T sin, as you do," responds the monk. 

" Well," says Bamboccio, " you must have sinned during 
the last two minutes, and you shall do penance now. What 
say you, brothers?" he adds, turning to his three com- 
panions, and glancing at the stream again. 

A clamorous cry of acquiescence in his proposition greets 
him. The monk endeavours to beat a retreat; but Peter, 
with a great Dutch oath, swears he shall do penance, and, 
catching him by the cowl and waistband, throws him clean 
into the water. 

"When he has washed a few of his sins out," he says, 
laughing, "we will fish him out." 

But the current is rapid and the stream is deep, and the 
monk never is fished out again. He is drowned. 

Bamboccio and his accomplishes are in consternation ; 
some counsel one thing, some another, but all at length agree 
to set off immediately on their return to Holland. 

Prom that fatal day Peter de Laar becomes another man. 
The shadow of the monk is always before him. At Amster- 
dam, at Haerlem, at Dordt, at Utrecht, where his paintings 
are held in great request and are munificently paid for, he 
lives extravagantly, and is as boisterous a boon companion as 
of old ; but his laugh loses its heartiness, and his eye grows 
dull and his cheek haggard. It is the Monk. He avoids the 
companions and accomplices of his crime, even his favourite 
brother Eoeland. 

In the year 1650, Andrew Both drowns himself in a 
canal at Venice. It is the Monk. 



14 Dutch Pictures. 

In the year 1660, John Both perishes in the water at 
Utrecht. It is the Monk. 

In the year 1663, Eoeland de Laar crossing a wooden 
bridge, the ass on which he is mounted stumbles : he is pre- 
cipitated into the torrent beneath, and is drowned. It is the 
Monk. 

In the year 1675, Peter de Laar having come to be more 
than sixty years of age, a miserable, infirm, sombre old man, 
ruined in health by excesses, impoverished in purse, eclipsed 
in fame by the rising star of Wouvermans, is found drowned 
in a well at Haerlem. It is the Monk. 

So they that smite with the sword perish by the sword j 
and I shut up Pilkington and the Shadows fade away. 




II. 



THE SHADOW OF DAY AND NIGHT. 



AS most of us have our Doubles, so, in many noticeable 
lives, there are a Day and Night so wonderfully 
contrasted, so strikingly opposed, so picturesque in their 
opposition to each other, that there can be few more remark- 
able subjects for consideration. 

Let me recall a few such Days and Nights. 

The weather is sultry, scorching, though there are banks 
of heavy clouds in the sky. A hot wind shakes the strangely- 
shaped leaves of gaunt trees fitfully to and fro, or agitates 
tufts of brushwood and furze, rankly luxuriant, which grow 
here and there on the grey rocks. There are sudden declivities, 
and more rocks beyond, furrowed, scarred, and seamed, by 
tears of brine. On every side beyond, as far as the strained 
eye can reach, is the interminable Sea. There are birds over- 
head with sullen napping wings, and insects and reptiles of 
strange shape beneath. In a mean house, with whitewashed 
walls, and crazy Venetian blinds, with paltry furniture strangely 
diversified by rich pieces of plate and jewellers's ware, is a 
man in a bath, with a Madras handkerchief tied round his 
head. Anon he is dressed by his servants, with whom he is 



1 6 Dutch Pictures, 

peevish and fretful. He grumbles with the coffee at breakfast, 
abuses his attendants, begins a dozen things and does not 
accomplish one. Now he is in his garden : you will observe 
that he is short, stout, sallow, and with a discontented 
expression of countenance. He wears a large straw hat, a 
white jacket and trousers, a checked shirt, and has . a black 
handkerchief knotted round his neck. He takes up a book, 
and throws it down, a newspaper, and casts it aside. He is 
idle, and loaths his idleness. Through an open window you 
may look into his plain study, of which the walls are covered 
with striped paper. You may see hanging their a portrait of 
a little child, and a map of the world. 

Who may this man be? What was he? A testy East 
India captain with a liver complaint, a disappointed Indigo 
planter, a crusty widower with a lagging Chancery suit ? No. 
It is Night now, but Day was. Twelve years before, he stood 
on the steps of a throne in Notre Dame with the Pontiff of 
the Catholic church behind him, with the dignitaries of that 
church, the princes of his empire, the marshals of his armies, 
the sages of his tribunals, the ladies of his court, the flower 
of his subjects on his right hand and on his left. He was 
arrayed in velvet, satin and gold, laurels on his head and a 
sceptre in his hand. He was Napoleon the Great, Emperor 
and King ; now he is the outlaw of Europe, the Ogre of his 
former subjects, the scoff of the Quarterly Eeview, the hated, 
bankrupt, captive, despot General Bonaparte, a prisoner 
at St. Helena, at the beck and call of an English orderly 
officer. The portrait of the little child is that of the King 
of Eome, whose melancholy Double, the pale young man 
in a white coat, is to be Metternichised in Vienna yonder, 



The Shadow of Day and Night. 1 7 

and the map is of the World which was to have been his 
inheritance. 

Again. We are in the pit of an Italian theatre. Wax 
tapers, in bell-shaped shades, flare round the dress circle, for 
we are in the eighteenth century , and as yet gas and fishtail 
burners are not. Gaudy frescoes decorate the front of the 
tiers of boxes ; the palisade of the orchestra is surmounted 
with a spiked railing ; the occupants of the pit, in which 
there are no seats, wear cocked-hats and wigs ; and, in the 
dress circle, the beaux sport laced ruffles and sparkling-hilted 
swords, and the belles powder and patches. In one of the 
proscenium-boxes is the Grand Duke, sitting, imposing, in 
embroidery ; behind him are his suite, standing humble in 
ditto. The corresponding box on the other side of the 
proscenium is empty. The first act of the opera is over, and 
an intermediary ballet is being performed. An impossible 
shepherd, in blue satin trunks, a cauliflower wig, and carrying 
a golden crook, makes choregraphic overtures, to live with 
him and be his love, to an apocryphal shepherdess in a role 
Pompadour and hair powder. You would see such a pair 
nowhere else save in Arcadia, or in Wardour Street, and in 
Dresden China. More shepherds and shepherdesses execute 
pastoral gambadoes, and the divertissement is over. Then 
commences the second act of the opera. About this time, 
verging on half-past nine in the evening, you hear the door 
of the vacant private box open. An easy chair is brought 
down to the front, and a book of the opera, a bottle of 
essences, and a golden snuff-box are placed upon the ledge 
before it. Anon enters unto these an infirm, staggering, 
broken-looking old man, with a splendid dress hanging in 

c 



1 8 Dutch Pictures. 

slovenly magnificence on his half-palsied limbs. He has a 
bloated countenance, marbled with purple stains, a heavy 
eyelid and a blood- shoot eye that once must have been bright 
blue. Every feature is shattered, weary, drooping, and flaccid. 
Every nerve is unstrung : the man is a wreck, and an un- 
sightly one. His flabby hands are covered with rings, a 
crumpled blue ribbon crosses his breast, and round his neck 
hangs another ribbon, from which daugles something that 
sparkles, like a diamond star. Finally, he is more than 
three parts inebriated. It is easy to understand that from 
bis unsteady hand, from the dozing torpor into which he 
occasionally falls, from the querulous incoherence of his 
speech, from the anxiety manifested by the thin, pale, old 
men in uniform, with the cross of a commander of Saint 
Louis, and the hard featured gentlemen with silver thistles in 
their cravats, who stand on either side of their master, and 
seem momentarily to fear that he will fall out of his chair. 
The beaux and belles in the dress circle do not seem to 
express much curiosity at the advent of this intoxicated 
gentleman. They merely whisper " E il Signore Cavalier e : 
he is very far gone to-night," or words to that effect. The 
spectacle is no novelty. The opera is that most beautiful 
one by Gluck, Orfeo. The Orpheus of the evening, in a 
Grecian tunic, but bewigged and powdered according to 
orthodoxy, is singing the sublime lament, " CJie faro senza 
Miridice." The beautiful wailing melody floats upwards, 
and for a moment the belles forget to flirt, and the beaux to 
swagger. Cambric handkerchiefs are used for other purposes 
than to assure the owner that the rouge on the cheeks holds 
fast, and is not coming off. What is the slovenly magnifico 



The Shadow of Day and Night. 19 

opposite the Grand Duke doing ? During the prelude he 
was nodding his head and breathing stentoriously ; but as the 
song proceeds, he sits erect in his chair ; his blue eye 
dilates ; a score of years of seams and furrows on his brows 
and cheeks vanish : he is a Man. But the strain concludes, 
and his Excellency bursts into a fit of maudlin weeping, and 
has recourse to the bottle of essences. 

His excellency has not spent a pleasant day. He has 
been bullied by his chaplain, snubbed by his chamberlain, 
and has had a deadly quarrel with his favourite. Moreover 
his dinner has disagreed with him, and he has drunk a great 
deal more, both before and after it, than was good for him. 
Are these tears merely the offspring of whimpering drunken- 
ness ; or has the music touched some responsive chord of the 
cracked lyre, sent some thoughts of what he was through his 
poor hazy brain clouded with wine of Alicant and strong 
waters ? Have the strains he has heard to-night, some mys- 
terious connection (as only music can have) with his youth, 
his dead happiness, his hopes crushed for ever; — with the 
days when he was Charles Edward Stuart, pretending to the 
Crown of England; when he rode through the streets of 
Edinburgh at the head of the clans amid the crooning of the 
bagpipes, the shouts of his partisans, the waving of silken 
banners 'broidered by the white hands of noble ladies. " Non 
sum qualis eram" his chaplain will tell him ; but, ah me ! 
what a sorry evening is this to so bright a morning. 

To come nearer home : the good Queen Anne reigns in 
England, and an enthusiastic phalanx of High Church raga- 
muffins have just been bellowing round the Queen's sedan 
chair, "God save your Majesty and Doctor Sacheverell." 

c 2 



20 Dutch Pictures, 

Thre are a great many country gentlemen in town, for term 
is just on, and the cause list is full. A white haired patriarch 
in extreme old age, who has been subpoenaed on some trial, 
has strolled from Westminster Hall, and entered the House 
of Lords, where he stands peering curiously at the carved 
roof, the dingy tapestry, and scarlet covered woolsack. He 
is one of those men in whose whole apparel and bearing you 
seem to read farmer, as in another man's you will read thief. 
His snowy white locks, his ruddy, sunburnt, freckeld coun- 
tenance carved into a thousand wrinkles, like a Nuremburg 
nut-cracker, tell of hale, hearty old age. You may read 
farmer in his napped felt hat and long duffel coat ; in his 
scarlet-flapped waistcoat and boots of untanned leather, his 
stout ashen staff, with a crutch and leathern strap. His full 
clear eye, his pleasant smile, his jaunty, though feeble bearing, 
say clearly farmer — a well to do, Queen-loving, God-fearing 
old agriculturist. His life has probably passed in peace and 
comfort ; and when he dies he will sleep in the green church- 
yard where his fore- elders sleep. Here is a London gentle- 
man who accosts him — a coffee-house wit, a buck skilled in 
the nice conduct of a clouded cane. He patronises the old 
farmer, and undertakes to show him the lions of the place. 
This is the door leading to my Lord Chancellor's robing 
room ; from behind that curtain enters Her Majesty ; there 
is the gallery for the peeresses ; there the bar. Is he not 
astonished ? Is not the place magnificent ? Being from the 
country (" Shocking Boeotian," says the buck compassionately 
to himself) he has probably never been in the house of Lords 
before. The old man raises his stick, and points it, tremu- 
lously, towards where, blazing in crimson velvet, embroidery 



The Shadow of Day and Night. 21 

and gold, is the Throne. " Never," he answers, " since I sat 
in that chair ! " The old farmer's Double was Eichard 
Cromwell, whilom Lord Protector of England. 

Here is a placid-looking little old man, trotting briskly 
down John Street, Tottenham Court Road. He is about 
seventy, apparently, but walks erect. He has a natty little 
three-cornered hat, a well-brushed black suit, rather white at 
the seams, grey silk stockings, and silver buckles in his shoes. 
Two powdered ailes de pigeon give relief to his simple good- 
humoured countenance, and his hair is gathered behind into 
a neat pigtail, which leaves a meandering line of powder on 
the back of his coat. His linen is very white, so are his 
hands, on one of the fingers of which he wears a ring of price. 
He lodges in a little street in the neighbourhood I have 
mentioned, pays his rent regularly, has frequent friendly chats 
with the book-stall keepers, to whom he is an excellent cus- 
tomer, and with whom he is highly popular ; pats all the 
children on the head, and smiles affably at the maid servants. 
The neighbours set him down as a retired schoolmaster, a half- 
pay navy purser, or, perhaps, a widower with a small inde- 
pendence. At any rate, he is a pleasant body, and quite the 
gentleman. This is about the close of his Day. Would you 
like to know his Night? Eead the Old Bailey Sessions 
Paper : ask the Bow Street officers, who have been tracking 
him for years, and have captured him at last ; who are carry- 
ing him handcuffed to Newgate, to stand his trial for Murder. 
His double was Governor Wall, commandant of Goree, who 
was hanged for the murder of Serjeant Armstrong, whom he 
caused to be flogged to death ; very strongly adjuring the 
negro who inflicted the torture, to cut the victim's liver out. 



22 Dutch Pictures, 

But I should never end were I to notice a tithe of the 
Days and Nights that flit across this paper while I write. 
A paralytic old octogenarian, drivelling, idiotic, and who, of 
all the passions of his other self has preserved but one, — the 
most grovelling avarice, — hobbles across a room, and, 
glancing at himself in a mirror, mutters, " That was once a 
man." The man was John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. 
A moping invalid, imbecile and speechless, dozing in an arm- 
chair, sees a servant endeavouring to break an obstinate lump 
of coal in the grate : " It's a stone, you blackguard ! " he cries; 
and these are the first words he has spoken for years — the 
first that have passed his lips since the Day shone no more 
on Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's. Anon a shrivelled 
little dotard, with a bald head and a yellow face, clad in a 
nightcap, drawers, and slippers, comes grimacing to my desk, 
and tells me that although it is Night now, he, Louis the 
Fourteenth, had his Day — Ludovicus Magnus : of the Porte 
St. Denis : Louis le Grand in the Gallery of Versailles : in a 
towering perruque and high-heeled shoes, giving laws to 
princes. A mincing gentleman in powder, with an olive or 
rather seagreen complexion, with a sky-blue coat, a waistcoat 
lined with rose- coloured satin, and silk stockings, and with an 
air something between a dandy and a dancing-master, tells 
me that, when alive, he lived over an upholsterer's shop, 
in the Rue St. Honore ; that he was frugal, just and incorrup- 
tible; that he was beloved by his landlord and landlady; 
but that he had a Double of the Convention and of the Com- 
mittee of Public Safety ; a Double who swam in the blood of 
all that was great and noble in France ; a Double whose name 
was Maximilian Bobespierre. 

Day and Night, but this is wondrous strange ! 



III. 

OUE, DOUBLES. 

MY philosophy makes no pretence to be elucidative or 
doctrinal ; it is humbly suggestive. I do not presume 
to explain or to advise ; I only crave the liberty, timidly and 
respectfully, to hint. 

My philosophy, like the attire of a beggar, is ragged. It 
is disjointed, threadbare, looped and windowed with the holes 
that have been picked in it ; patched, pinned instead of 
buttoned; flimsy and unsubstantial, and, consequently, 
undeserving (as all rags must be) of respect. But it may 
serve to wile away some ten minutes or so, even as a tattered 
little wretch was wont, in the days of long stages, to 
amuse the outside passengers by keeping pace with the 
" spanking tits," for the contingent reversion of a halfpenny ; 
and as, in our own times, forlorn little street "Arabs " turn 
the somersaults known as " cartwheels" in the mud, for the 
amusement of the occupants of omnibus " knifeboards." 

I have been philosophising lately, after my poor manner, 
on the dualities of men and women, of the faculty we all have, 
more or less, for casting our skin — for being one man abroad 
and another, at home ; one character for the footlights, and 



24 Dutch Pictures. 

another, for the greenroom ; of the marvellous capacity with 
which we are all gifted, in greater or smaller proportions, for 
playing a part, and, not only for playing one radically and 
fundamentally different from the part we enact in private life, 
but for playing it simultaneously with the other, and for being 
(to use a very trite and imperfect Malapropism) two gentlemen 
at once. Everybody, so it seems to me, can be, and is, some- 
body else. 

You know this already, you may say, reader ; but you 
will not be angry with me for telling you what you knew 
before. To be told what we know, flatters our self-love, and 
makes us think, with some self-gratulation, of what sharp 
fellows we are ; but to be told that which we don't know 
generally* wounds our vanity or excites our scepticism, and 
inclines us to a suspicion that our informant, although doubt- 
less a well-informed person, is playing upon our credulity or 
making sport of our ignorance. You will, perhaps, object 
that in my theory of corporeal duality (I don't hint at the 
duality of the mind, for that is a subject above my reach, 
and above my ken), I am but giving another name to the 
hypocrisy of mankind. But the duality I mean is not always 
hypocritical. The double man is frequently unconscious of 
his duality. He is as sincere in one part as he is in the 
other, and believes himself just as firmly to be the person he 
is representing, as an accomplished actress, such as Miss 
O'Neil, would shed real, scalding tears, and sob out words 
that came really from the heart ; or as tipsy Manager Ellis- 
ton, in the height and glory, the tinsel and Dutch metal 
intoxication of a cardboard coronation, thought himself 
George the Fourth in reality, and blessed his people with 



Our Doubles. 25 

vinous solemnity and sincerity. If people would place a 
little more credence in this duality, this Siamese-twin quality 
of their neighbours and of themselves, they would be more 
tolerant ; they would not accuse of unblushing disregard of 
truth the gentleman who, when they had knocked at his 
door, entered his hall, and felt his oilcloth beneath their very 
feet, called, himself, over the bannisters, that he was not at 
home. Mr. Smith, they might thus reason, the working, 
novel-writing, statistic-hatching, or simply lazy and dun- 
hating Mr. Smith, may certainly be, and is, on the first floor 
landing ; but the other Mr. Smith, his double, who has time 
to spare, and likes morning calls, and can conveniently settle 
the little bill his visitors may have called about, is not at 
home. He is a hundred miles away. He has just stepped 
out. It is uncertain when he will return. Duality, properly 
understood, would, like charity, cover a multitude of sins. 

Some men are double willingly, knowingly, and with pre- 
meditation — they can be both wolves and lambs ; and with 
these duplex persons, most frequently the lamb's face is the 
mask, and the wolf's the genuine article. Many put on 
masquerade knowingly but smwillingly, and curse the mask 
and domino while they wear them. A great many wear 
double skins unconsciously, and would be surprised if you 
were to tell them that they once were some one else than 
what they are now, and that they have still another skin 
beneath the masquerading one. Of such is the ploughboy, 
over whose uncouth limbs has been dragged, slowly and 
painfully, a tightly fitting garment of discipline and drill. 
Of such is the schoolmaster who has a cricket-loving, child- 
petting, laughter-exciting, joke-cracking skin for inmost 



26 Dutch Pictures. 

covering, but is swathed without in parchment bands of 
authority and stern words — bands scribbled over with 
declensions and perfects forming in avi, stained with ink, 
dusty with the powder of slate pencils, stockaded with 
c7ievaux-de-frise of cane and birch. There is the duality 
donned by the exigency of position. The fat man who 
knows himself inwardly, and is notoriously at home a ninny, 
yet, awake to the responsibility of a cocked hat and staff and 
gold laced coat, frowns himself into the semblance of the 
most austere of beadles, is a most double-faced individual. 
Necessity is the mother not only of invention, but of duality 
in men ; and habit is the great wet nurse. She suckles the 
twins, and sends them forth into the world. 

Look at Lord de Eougecoffer, Secretary of the depart- 
ment of State for no matter what affairs, and see how double 
a man habit has made him. To look at him, throning on 
the Treasury bench, you would think that nothing less than 
the great cauldron of broth political could simmer and 
bubble beneath his hat, and that the domestic pot-au-feu 
could find no place there. To hear him pleading with all 
the majesty of official eloquence the cause of tapeism, irre- 
mediably crushing into an inert and shapeless mass her 
Majesty's Opposition on the other side of the house (he has 
been crushed himself, many a time, when he sat opposite, 
and is none the worse for the crushing at this hour) 3 sono- 
rously rapping the tin box of office, zealously coughing down 
injudicious grievance-mongers, nay, even winking at his sub- 
ordinates while they imitate the cries of the inferior animals, 
for the better carrying on of the Government of which he is a 
member : To watch the wearying and laborious course of his 



Our Doubles. 27 

official life, tlie treadmill industry to which he is daily and 
nightly doomed, the matter-of-fact phraseology and action to 
which he is confined ; to observe all this you might think that 
he was a mere incarnation of Hansard's Debates, Babbage's 
calculating machines, and Walkingame's Tutor's Assistant, 
indefinitely multiplied ; that his bowels were of red tape, his 
blood of liquified sealing-wax, his brain a pulp of mashed blue- 
books. Yet this Lord de Eougecoffer of Downing Street, the 
Treasury bench, and the division-lobby, this crusher of Opposi- 
tion and pooh-pooher of deputations, and stifler of grievances, 
has a Double in Belgrave Square, enthusiastically devoted to 
the acquisition of Raphaels, Correggios, Dresden china and 
Etruscan vases ; a Double so thoroughly a magister coquinoe 
that he seriously contemplates writing a cookery-book some 
day, at his leisure — but he will know no leisure, on this side 
the grave, until he is made a Peer, or is paralysed — a Double 
enjoying Punch, and with an acknowledged partiality for 
Ethiopian serenaders ; a Double at a beautiful park down in 
Hampshire, who is regarded as an oracle on all matters 
connected with agriculture by ill-used and ruined gentlemen 
with top-boots and heavy gold chains; who has a taste 
almost amounting to a foible for the cultivation of exotic 
flowering plants ; a Double who is the delight of the smaller 
branches of a large family ; who can do the doll trick to a 
nicety, make plum-puddings in his hat, cut an orange into a 
perfect Chinese puzzle of shapes, and make as excellent a 
" back " at leap frog as any young gentleman from the ages 
of eight to twelve, inclusive, could desire. The Lord in 
Downing Street rolls out statistics by the column ; the Lord 
in Belgrave Square is an indifferent hand at counting at 



28 Dutch Pictures. 

counting at whist, and never could understand a betting- 
book. The Lord in private life is a nobleman of unimpeach- 
able veracity, of unquestioned candour and sincerity, and 
enjoys the possession of an excellent memory ; the Lord in 
St. Stephen's confidently affirms black to be white, shuffles, 
prevaricates, and backs out of obligations in an unseemly 
manner, and has a convenient forgetfulness of what he has 
said or done, and what he ought and has promised, to say or 
do> which is really surprising. 

Habit gives a double cuticle to Mr. John Trett (of the 
firm of Tare and Trett) of the city of London, ship-broker. 
One Mr. Trett is a morose despot, with a fierce whisker, a 
malevolent white neckcloth, and a lowering eye. He is the 
terror of his clerks, the bane of ship-captains, the bugbear of 
the Jerusalem coffee-house. His surly talk is of ships that 
ought not to have come home in ballast, and underwriters on 
whom he will be " down ;" of confounded owners, of freights 
not worth twopence, of ships gone to the dogs, and customers 
not worth working for. He is a hard man, and those who 
serve him, he says, do not earn their salt. He is a tempe- 
rate man, and refuses chop-and-sherry invitations with scorn. 
He is a shabbily dressed man, and groans at the hardness of 
the times; yet he has a double at Dalston worth fifty 
thousand pounds, the merriest, most jovial, chirruping, 
middle-aged gentleman, with the handsomest house, the most 
attached servants, the largest assortment of comic albums 
and scrap books, and the prettiest daughters that eyes could 
wish to behold. He is something more than an amateur on 
the violoncello, although Giuseppe Pizzicato, from Genoa, 
was last week brought to Guildhall, at the complaint of Mr. 



Our Doubles. 29 

Treet's double, charged with outraging the tranquillity of 
Copperbottom Court, Threadneedle Street, where the ship- 
brokers have their offices, by the performance of airs from 
Don Giovanni on the hurdy-gurdy. East of Temple Bar 
Trett abhors the juice of the grape ; at Dalston he has an 
undeniable taste for old Port, and is irresistible in the pro- 
position of " another bottle." It is quite a sight, when he 
insists on fetching* this same " other bottle " from some 
peculiar and only-to-himself known bin, to see him emerging 
from the cellar beaming with smiles, cobwebs, and old Port 
wine. He is an excellent father, a liberal master, a jewel of 
a man at Dalston: only beware of him in Copperbottom 
Court. Temple Bar is the scarifier that performs the flaying 
operation upon him, and trust me, the under city skin is a 
rough and a hard one. 

When you walk into Lincoln's Inn old square, and up the 
rotten staircase (worn with despairing client's footsteps) of 
No. 202 ; when you read on a scowling door an inscription 
purporting that it is the entrance to Messrs. Harrow and 
Wrench's offices ; when, opening that door, which creaks on 
its hinges as though clients were being squeezed behind it, 
you push open the inner portal of baize, which yields with a 
softness equal to the velvet of a cat's paw ; when you have 
waited a sufficient time in the outer office, and shuddered at 
the pale and sallovv-visaged runners, and the ghastly Law 
Almanack, like Charles the First's death warrant, in a black 
frame, and listened to the grim music of the busy-writing 
clerks, scoring the doom of clients on parchment cat from 
clients' skins, with pens trimmed from clients' feathers, with 
ink distilled from clients' blood, tempered with the gall of 



.30 Dutch Pictures. 

law (as all these matters appear to you) ; when you are at 
last admitted to the inner sanctum, and to an interview with 
Mr. Harrow ; when, as a debtor, you have begged for time, 
for lenity, for mercy, and have been refused; or, as a creditor, 
listened to Mr. Harrow's bland promises to sell Brown up, 
to seize Jones's sticks, to take care that Smith does not pass 
his last examination, to serve Tompkins with a ne exeat, and 
to sue out process of outlawry against Robinson ; when you 
have paid a bill of costs, or have been presented with one 
which you have not the remotest chance of paying ; when 
you have sustained all the misery and madness of the law's 
delay, and all the insolence of the office, you will very pro- 
bably descend the staircase, commending the whole temple of 
injustice, cruelty, and chicane, to Ahriman and other demo- 
niacal persons. Mr. Harrow will seem to you an embodied 
ghoul ; Mr. Wrench, a vampire, with a whole faggot of legal 
sticks and staves through what ought to be his heart, but is 
a rule to show cause. The scribbling clerks, the tallow- 
visaged runners, the greasy process-servers, the villainous 
bailiff's followers snuffing up the scent of a debtor to be 
trapped from the instructions of a clerk — all these will 
appear to you cannibals, blood-suckers, venomous reptiles, 
hating their fellow-creatures, and a-hungered for their 
entrails. Yet, all these useful members of society are 
dualities; they have all their doubles. Mr. Harrow leaves 
his inexorable severity, his savage appetite for prey on his 
faded green-baize table. In Guildford Street, Eussell 
Square, he gives delightful evening parties, loses his money 
at cards with charming complacency, and is never proof 
against petitions for new bonnets from his daughters, for 



Our Doubles. 31 

autumn excursions from Lis wife, for ten-pound notes from 
his son at Cambridge. Mr. Wrench (who more particularly 
looks after the selling-up and scarifying business) is an 
active member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Animals, and is quite a " Man of Ross " among the poor 
crossing-sweepers in the neighbourhood of his residence. 
The chief clerk (who has the keenest nose and sharpest talon 
for a recalcitrant bankrupt of any managing clerk in the 
square) keeps rabbits, portioned his laundress's daughter 
when she married, and always weeps when he goes to the 
play, and the " Rent Day " is performed. The clerks who 
write the doom of clients, the runners, the process-servers, 
leave their deadly cunning, and remorseless writs, and life- 
destroying processes in their desks and blue bags and greasy 
leathern pouches; they leave their skins behind too; and, 
after office-hours, are joyous boon companions, irreproach- 
able husbands in small suburban cottages, sweethearts leav- 
ing nothing to be desired, free-hearted roysterers always 
willing to be their twopence to another's twopence, men and 
brothers feeling another's woe, hiding the faults they see, 
showing mercy, inter-aiding and assisting each other. And, 
believe me, this species of duality is not the most uncom- 
mon. The butcher is, nine times out of ten, kind-hearted 
.and peaceable at home; Sanson, the executioner, had a 
passion for the cultivation of flowers, and played prettily on 
the piano ; General Haynau, I dare say (for the sake of 
-argument, at least), was a "love" of an old gentleman in 
private life, with such "loves" of grey moustachios, and so 
full of anecdote ! * Do you think the tiger is always savage 
* I really met the General at a German watering place, and found 



32 Dutch Pictures, 

and brutal in domestic life ; that the hyena does not laugh 
good-humouredly in the bosom of his family ; that the wolf 
can't be sociable ? No such thing. I dare say that clouds 
do sometimes obscure the zoological felicity ; that Mrs. Tiger 
occasionally complains, should the antelope be tough or the 
marrow scanty ; that Miss Hyena may lament the hardness 
of the times and the scarcity of carrion ; and that Mr. Lupus 
may do worse than he expected during the winter; but I 
think the wild beasts can't be always howling, and yellin g, 
and craunching, and tearing at home? 

We grow so accustomed to see people in one character 
and costume, that we can scarcely fancy the possibility of 
that duality they certainly possess. For us the lion must be 
always lying in a hole under a rock, waiting for a traveller. 
We ignore his duality, the lion at home. We have grown so 
accustomed to a Mr. Phelps in a spangled Eoman toga, or a 
Mr. Buckstone in a skyblue coat and scanty nankeen trousers, 
that we can't fancy those admired actors in private life, save 
in theatrical costumes, asking for beer in blank verse, in the 
first case ; throwing the spectators in convulsions of laughter 
by poking the fire, in the second. We so mix up double men, 
and double dresses, and double avocations, that we fail to 
recognize even persons with whom we are familiar when they 
have laid the state dress and state character aside, and walk 
abroad plain men. We see a quiet-looking gentleman in 
plain black cheapening asparagus in Covent Garden Market, 
and we are told that he is the Speaker of the House of 

him the pet of the table-d'hote, and an immense favourite with the 
ladies. He once won a very large sum at Hombourg, and on his depar- 
ture, gave a handsome percentage of his winnings to the poor. 



Our Doubles. 33 

Commons. Where are his bagwig, and his mace, that he should 
use as a walkingstick, or, at least, carry under his arm like an 
umbrella ? Where is his three-cornered hat, with which he 
accomplishes those curious hanky-panky tricks in counting 
members ? We are shewn a stout gentleman in a white hat 
and a cut away coat close to a handsome quiet-looking man, 
smoking a cigar, and are told that one designed the Crystal 
Palace, and that the other raised the Britannia Bridge.* 
Where are their compasses, their rules, their squares ? Why 
don't they walk about the streets with their hands thrust in 
their waistcoats, their hair thrown back, and their eyes in a 
fine frenzy rolling ? Without going quite so far as the boy who 
bebeved that every judge was born with a wig on his head 
and ermine on his shoulders, can you, can I, fancy a judge 
in a jacket and wide-a-wake hat ? or, again, a judge in opera 
tights and a crush hat exchanging fisticuffs with a dandy in 
the stalls of Her Majesty's theatres? Is there not something 
incongruous and inharmonious in the realization of the 
picture of an archbishop in a linsey-woolsey nightcap ? We 
can fancy a burglar cleaning his dark lantern, oiling his centre- 
bit, loading his pistols ; but can we fancy him tending his 
sick wife, or playing with bis children ? 

It may be the ruling habit, after all, and not the ruling- 
passion, that is strong in death. The schoolmaster who 
directed his school to " dismiss ; " the judge who sent the 
jury to consider of their verdict; the warrior who murmured 
ttte d'armee; the mathematician who gave the square of 
twelve; the jester who said " drop the curtain; the farce is 
over ;" all these responded more to some watchword of habit, 
* R. S., ob. 1859. 

D 



34 Dutch Pictures. 

than of a predominant passion. Doctor Black, though an 
excellent schoolmaster, can hardly be said to have had a 
passion for teaching boys their accidence : it was, perhaps, 
more the habit of the judge to sum up evidence for the jury, 
than his passion ; although Napoleon certainly had a passion 
for war, the mathematican (I forget his name) was habituated 
to arithmetrical exercises, and gave the square of twelve 
through the force of habit; and as for the jester, as for 
Francis Eabelais, he was, for all his strange wild talk, a just 
and pious man ; and it must have been the form, rather than 
the spirit, of a jest that he is said to have uttered in his last 
moments. Among the instances where the ruling passion 
does really seem to have been strong in death, those of the 
miser who wished the candle to be extinguished, as "he could 
die in the dark ; " and the Highland Cateran* who objected 
to extreme unction as an " unco' waste of ulzie;" seem to me 
the most worthy of notice, though I am afraid the foundation 
on which their authenticity rests is rather dubious. 

* Rob Roy 



-^SF^fc2S^f^>^ 



IV. 



THE GOLDEN CALF. 



EEADER, were you ever in — 
I have a difficulty in expressing the word. Four 
little letters would serve my turn; but I dare not — this 
being above all for Household eyes — write them down. I 
might say Tophet, Hades, the place that is said to be paved 
with good intentions, the locality where old maids lead 
specimens of the simious race, Purgatory, L'Inferno, Tar- 
tarus; the debateable land where Telemachus (under the 
guidance of good Archbishop Eenelon, taking the pseudonym 
of Mentor) went to seek for Ulysses ; all sorts of things ; but, 
none of them would come up in terseness and comprehen- 
siveness to the name the place is really called by, and which 
it is really like. 

[Readers, were you ever in Bartholomew Lane in the city 
of London. There is the wall of the Bank of England; 
there the Kotunda with those pleasant swing doors that with 
their " out " and " in " seem to bear the converse of Dante's 
immortal inscription ; for who enters there takes Hope along 
with him — the hope of the residuary legatee, and the ex- 
ecutor, and the dividend warrant bearer, and the government 

D 2 



36 Dutch Pictures. 

annuitant. There are the men who sell the dog-collars; the 
badly painted, well varnished pictures (did ever anybody buy 
one of those pictures, save perhaps a mad heir, frantic with 
the vanity of youthful blood to spend the old miser his 
grandfather's savings, and by misuse to poison good?); the 
spurious bronze sixpenny popguns; and the German silver 
pencil cases. There, above all are sold those marvellous 
pocket-books, with metallic pages, everlasting pencils, elastic 
straps, snap-locks, almanacs of the month, tables of the 
eclipses of the moon, the tides, the price of stamps, com- 
pound interest, the rate of wages, the birthdays of the Eoyal 
Family, and the list of London bankers — those pocket-books 
full of artful pockets — sweetly smelling pouches — for gold, 
silver, or notes, that suggest inexhaustible riches ; and that a 
man must buy if he have money, and very often does buy, 
being without, but hoping to have some. I have such a 
pocket-book to this day. It is old, greasy, flabby, white at 
the edges now; but it burst with banknotes once — yea, burst 
— the strap flying one way and the clasp the other ; and on 
its ass-skin opening pages were memoranda of the variations 
of the funds. There in the distance is Lothbury, whose very 
name is redolent of bullion — the dwelling-place of the golden 
Jones and the Loyds made of money; of auriferous gold- 
heavers in dusky counting-houses, who shovel out gold and 
weigh sovereigns until their hands become clogged and 
clammy with the dirt of dross, and they wash them perforce. 
There is the great Mammon Club, the Stock Exchange, 
where bulls and bears in white hats and cutaway coats are 
now frantic about the chances of the Derby favourite, and 
the next pigeon match at the Red House ; now about three 



The Golden Calf. 37 

and a quarter for the account and Turkish scrip ; now about 
a " little mare," name unknown, that can be backed to do 
wonderful things, anywhere, for any amount of moneys but 
who allow no one to be frantic within the walls of their club 
under a subscription of ten guineas per annum; tarring, 
feathering, flouring, bonneting, and otherwise demolishing 
all those who dare to worship Mammon without a proper 
introduction and a proper burnt-offering. All Bartholome v 
Lane smells of money. Orange tawny canvas bags ; escorted 
Pickford vans with bullion for the Bank cellars ; common - 
looking packing-cases full of ingots that might turn Bethnal 
Green into Belgravia ; bankers' clerks with huge pocket-books 
secured by iron chains round their bodies, holding bills and 
checks for thousands ; stockbrokers, billbrokers, sharebrokers, 
money- brokers' offices ; greasy men selling Birmingham sove- 
reigns for a penny a piece (and a wager, of course); auc- 
tioneers, at the great roaring mart, knocking down advowsons 
and cures of souls to the highest bidder : there is gold every- 
where in pockets, hearts, minds, souls, and strengths — gold, 
" bright and yellow, hard and cold " — gold for bad and gold 
for good, — 

" Molten, graven, hammer'd and roll'd, — 

Heavy to get, and light to hold, 

Now stamped with the image of Good Queen Bess, 
. And now of a Bloody Mary." 

But how about the place I did not care to name ? This. 
Little reck the white-neckclothed clergymen, so demure, so 
snug, so unimpeachable in umbrella ; the old ladies in 
their gray shawls and coal-scuttle bonnets ; the young spend- 
thrifts flushed with the announcement of so much money 



38 Dutch PiBures. 

standing in their names in Consols, and eager to find bro- 
kers to sell out for them ; the anomalous well-dressed, 
watch-chained, clean-shaven class, who seem to make it & 
pretext for having " business in the city " to consume 
bowls of soup at the Cock in Threadneedle Street, or sand- 
wiches and sherry at Garraways ; — little do these harm- 
less votaries of Mammon know of the existence of a sul- 
phureous subterranean in the vicinity, where Mammon strips 
off his gold-laced coat and cocked hat; sends Dei Gratia 
packing ; and puts on his proper livery of horns and hoofs 
and a tail ; where the innoxious veal pie in Birch the pastry- 
cook's window in Cornhill casts off its crust — has four legs, 
horns, and a yellow coat, and stands on a pedestal — the 
Golden Calf — in — the place I won't mention to ears polite. 

Under Capel Court, where the lame ducks, the disem- 
bodied spirits of ruined stockbrokers hover, like phantoms, 
on the banks of the Styx with no halfpenny to pay their 
ferry-boat over, there is a staircase — foul, stony, precipitous 
and dark — like one in a station-house or the poor side of a 
debtors' prison. Such establishments have no monopoly of 
underground staircases like these that lead from life and 
liberty to squalor, misery, and captivity. At the bottom of 
the staircase there is a board which some misanthropic brewer 
has cast into the pit (hoping to find it eventually), relative to 
entire porter and sparkling ales. Placards also, telling of 
wines and spirits, are as distinct as the gloominess of a place 
rivalling a coal-cellar in obscurity and a bear-pit in savagery, 
will allow them to be. This place is a public-house and — 
well, let us compromise the matter, and call it Hades. 

You have very little opportunity of judging what the 



The Golden Calf. 39 

place is like inside. You only know that it is dark and full 
of smoke and men. Walls, bar, chairs, tables, drinking- 
vessels must be of little account when the noblest study of 
mankind — being, as it is well known, man — man, compasses 
you round about, a smoking, drinking, whiskered, hoarse, 
squabbling, shrieking crowd. Here a boastful buck, all 
rings and rags. Here rags in their unadulterated condition, 
but laced with grease and slashed with prospectuses and 
share-lists. Here roguery, in luck, with clothes all too new, 
and that will become old before their time, acting the cheap 
Amphytrion in beer and pipes. Here carcasses without 
gibbets and gibbets without carcasses looking hungrily upon 
those who feed. Here utter broken-down misery : hunger 
that was once well-fed — that has lent to many, but is 
ashamed to borrow ; perfect poverty that has no game up — 
no little caper — that is not fly to anything — that has no 
irons in the fire — that knows no parties — that can put you 
up to no first-rate moves — that is not waiting for a chance 
or to see its way, or something to turn up, but is only too 
glad to warm itself at an eleemosynary fire, and inhale the 
fumes of other men's tobacco, and wrap itself as in a gar- 
ment with the steam of the fried onions of the more pros- 
perous, and brood quietly in a corner of this Bartholomew 
Lane Hades, ever remembering that it is a beggar, and that 
it was once worth, a hundred thousand pounds. 

You that have heard of commercial manias, and that they 
are periodical, don't believe in their transient nature. There 
is always a Mania. Speculation never lulls. When thou- 
sands are shy, sixpence halfpenny offers. Mammon tempers 
the wind to the shorn speculator. There is always some- 



40 Dutch Pictures. 

tiling up. Thus in this Hades when railways are flat, there 
is always something to be done in gold mines. When the 
auriferous veins run short, there are nice little pickings to 
be got out of amalgamated companies for the exploitation of 
coal ;' strata of which are always found in the very nick of 
time somewhere where they were never heard or dreamed of 
before. Should the yield of the black diamond prove unre- 
munerative, a rich vein of lead is sure to turn up at those 
famous Pyngwylly-Tuddyllyg mines in Wales, where lead 
has been promising for so many years, and has swallowed up 
so many thousand pounds in red gold, and driven so many 
Welsh squires to madness, or the Bankruptcy Court. Copper 
(somewhere between Honolulu and Vancouver's Island), or 
quicksilver (anywhere in the Sou- west-by-eastern latitudes) 
can scarcely fail when lead is scarce. When metals are at a 
discount, Land Companies ; Emigration Companies ; Extra- 
Economical Gas Companies, to give consumers gas (in their 
own pipes) at a penny farthing per thousand feet; Eco- 
nomical Funeral Companies — a shroud, a leaden coffin, mutes 
with silk scarves, gloves, hatbands, cake and wine, and a 
tombstone surmounted by a beautiful sculptured allegory of 
the three Graces inciting the trumpet of Eame to sound the 
praises of the domestic Virtues — all for three pound ten; 
Economical Hotel Companies — beds free, breakfasts gratis, 
wax candles for nothing, and no charge for waiters — Loan 
Societies, lending any amount of money on personal security 
at nominal rates of interest; Freehold Land and Building 
Societies, by subscribing to which (no fines, no stoppages, no 
entrance money), parties can become their own landlords — 
dwelling in houses as big as that once occupied by Count 



The Golden Calf. 4* 

Walewski at Albert Gate, and walking fifty miles per diem, 
if they choose, on their own land — in the short space of 
three months from day of enrolment; Guarantee Societies 
for securing merchants and bankers against dishonest clerks, 
landlords from non-rent paying tenants, sheep from the rot, 
pigs from the measles, feet from corns, drunkards from red 
noses, and quiet, country parsonages from crape-masked bur- 
glars. Such, and hundreds more such companies are always 
somehow in the market, suspectible of being quoted, ad- 
vertised, and bruited about in Hades. There are always 
sufficient of these evanescent specs afloat for appointments to 
be made between dingy men ; for pots of beer to be called for 
on the strength of ; for letters to be written (on the first sheet 
of the half quire of sleezy post, purchased with borrowed half- 
pence from the cheap stationer — he who also sells green- 
grocery and penny blacking — in Stag's Head Court) ; for the 
pot-boy to be importuned for wafers ; for a Post-office Direc- 
tory of the year before last to be in immense request ; for 
postage-stamps to be desired with a mad unquenchable (oft- 
times hopeless) longing ; for pipes to be lit, and the unwonted 
extravagance of another screw indulged in ; for pens to be 
anxiously bitten, gnawed, and sucked ; for the thick black 
mud at the bottom of the greasy, battered inkstand to be 
patiently scraped up, as if there were indeed a Pactolus at the 
bottom ; for intricate calculations to be made with scraps of 
chalk, or wet fingers on the dinted table — the old, old, flatter- 
ingly fallacious calculations that prove with such lying accu- 
racy that where there are no proceeds the profits must be 
necessarily very large : that two and two infallibly make five, 
and that from a capital of nothing, interest of at least seventy 



42 _. Dutch Pictures. 

per centum per annum must immediately accrue ; for those 
worn, tattered, disreputable old pocket books at whose exist- 
ence I have already hinted to be unbuckled and disembowelled ; 
for the old dog's-eared bundles of foolscap to be dug up from 
the recesses of the' old scarecrow hat with the crape round it 
— the hat that certainly holds, in addition, the lamentable 
ninepenny cotton pocket-handkerchief full of holes, and per- 
haps the one black worsted glove without finger-tops ; and 
not impossibly the threepen'north of boiled beef for to-night's 
supper ; for, finally the " party " to be waited for — the party 
who has money, and believes in the scheme ; the party who 
is seldom punctual, and sometimes fails altogether in keeping 
his appointment — but when he does come produces a plea- 
surable sensation in Hades by the sight of his clean shirt, un- 
patched boots, nappy hat and watchchain : — who cries out 
with a loud confident voice, " What are you drinking, gentle- 
men? Beer? Psha — have something warm;" and orders 
the something warm; and throws down the broad, brave five 
shilling piece to pay for it ; and, with his creaking boots, his 
shining jewellery, and big cigar-case (to say nothing of that 
new silk umbrella, which did it belong to the speculator in 
the blue goggles and check trousers opposite would be in less 
than half-an-hour safe in the Times office in Printing House 
Square, in the shape at least, of a five and sixpenny advertise- 
ment of the " Putative nephews and Cousins-german Tontine 
and Mutual Assurance Company," provisionally registered), 
infuses unutterable envy of gold into ragged Hunger yonder, 
who whispers to unquenched Thirst his neighbour, that Tom 
Lotts has got hold of another good card, and what a lucky 
fellow he is ! 



The Golden Calf. 43 

Moons and stars ! can anything equal the possessed state 
of mind of a man with a scheme ? A man walks about, pulls 
his hair, talks folly, writes nonsense, makes a fool of himself 
about a fair woman. He falls enamoured of a picture, an 
opera tune, a poem with a new thought in it. A friend's 
goodness moves him quite to forget his own, till the friend 
turns out a rascal. A new country, city, house may engross 
all his admiration, observation, appreciation, till he becomes 
immensely bored ; but give him a scheme — a project, that he 
thinks he can make his fortune by. Set up that Golden Calf 
on the altar of his heart, and you will never find him writing 
letters to the Times to complain of the length of Mammon's 
liturgy, as some short-breathed Christians do of that of the 
Church of England. Twenty full services a day will not be 
too much for him. As he walks the streets, his scheme pre- 
cedes him as the pillar of cloud and fire went before the 
Israelites of old. When he reads the share list in the news- 
papers, the market prices of his company stand out in highest 
altitude of relief, and quote themselves in letters of burnished 
gold. It is a fine day in November when his scheme is at 
premium ; it freezes in July when it is a discount. There are 
no names in the Court Guide so aristocratic as those in his 
committee (with power to add to their number). He envies 
no one. Nor dukes their gilded chariots, nor bucks in the 
parks their hundred guinea horses, nor members of clubs their 
Pall Mall palaces, nor M.P.'s their seats in the House ; nor 
peers their robes, nor earls their yachts, nor mayors their 
chairs, nor aldermen their turtle, nor squires their broad 
lands, parks, and deer ; nor judges their old port ; nor college 
dons their claret and red mullet ; nor bankers their parlours ; 



44 Dutch Pi&ures. 

nor old ladies their dividends. All these things and more 
will belong to him when his scheme pays. The rainbow 
waistcoats in the shops are ticketed expressly for his eye, to 
fix themselves on his remembrance till the project succeeds, 
and he can buy them. Mr. Benson is now manufacturing 
gold watches, Mr. Hoby boots, Mr. Sangster jewelled walk- 
ing-sticks ; Mr. Hart is new painting the Trafalgar at Green- 
wich, redecorating the Collingwood room, and bottling milk 
punch by the thousand dozen ; Messrs. Hedges and Butler 
are laying down Champagne and Johannisberger ; Messrs. 
Fortnum and Mason are importing truffles, pdte-de-foie-gras, 
Narbonne honey, Belgian ortolans, edible birds'-nests, and 
Eussian caviare ; Messrs. Laurie are building carriages with 
silver axle-boxes, and emblazoned hammer-cloths ; Messrs. 
Day and Scott are training two-year-olds at Newmarket ; all 
expressly for him when his scheme comes into its property, 
and he has twenty thousand pounds to spare in trifles. Tor 
that good time coming, Mr. Cubitt is running up a few nine- 
storied houses or so down Kensington way ; some half dozen 
members of parliament — all staunch conservatives, of course, 
as befits men of property — are thinking seriously of accepting 
the Chiltern Hundreds ; and two or three peers of the realm 
are going to the dogs as fast as they can, in order to be sold 
up, and their estates, country houses, manorial rights disposed 
of (in good time) to the lucky possessor of the successful 
scheme. Which is the philosopher's stone. "Which is the 
latch-key to Thomas Tiddler, his ground, Which, even in 
abeyance, even in the topmost turret of a castle in the air, 
can yet comfort, solace, soothe the schemer, making him for- 
get hunger, thirst, cold, sleeplessness, debt, impending death. 



The Golden Calf. 45 

Which is Alnaschar's basket of glass, and is kicked down 
often into the kennel, with a great clatter, and ruin of tum- 
blers, pepper-casters, and hopes. Yet to have a scheme, and 
to believe in it, is to be happy. Do you think Solomon de 
Caux, crazy, ragged, in the Bieetre, did not believe that his 
scheme would triumph eventually, and he be sent for to Ver- 
sailles, while the mad-house keeper and all unbelievers in 
steam engines were to be conveyed incontinently to the gallies ? 
Do you think that that poor worn-out loyal gentleman, the 
Marquis of Worcester, cared one jot for the hundreds of 
thousands of pounds he had lost in the king's service, while 
he yet had schemes and inventions, which must at last turn 
out successful, and bring him fame and fortune? Do you 
think that the alchemists grudged their patrimonies smould- 
ered away in the crucible ; or that the poor captain, who 
imagined if he did not perfectly invent the long range, was 
not comforted even on his death-bed, by the persuasion that 
the Great Mogul, the Grand Serag, the King of Oude, the 
Lama of Thibet, or the Tycoon of Japan, must come before 
life was extinct, and buy the great invention, though English 
Boards of Ordnance, and European potentates looked coldly 
upon it, for millions sterling, down? Do you think that 
Corney O'Gripper yonder, though ragged and penniless, is not 
happy while he has some old " schame " to propound, or some 
new one to perfect ? 

Corney has a most puissant and luxuriant head of hair — - 
the only thing that is rich about him. It is a popular belief 
that Corney scratches his various " schames " ready made out 
of this head of hair as the cock in the fable did the pearl. 
At all events his long fingers are continually busied in the 



46 Dutch Pictures. 

tufted recesses of his head-thatch, and as he scratches he pro- 
pounds. His attire is very bad, but black. In his very worst 
phase of costume he was never known to wear any waiscoat 
than a black satin one, any coat but a swallow tail. Both 
these articles of apparel show much more of the lining than is 
consonant with our received notions of taste in costume. 
From one imputation, however, they must be exempt. 
Numerous as are their crevices and gaps they never disclose 
the existence of such an article as a shirt. On wet days 
the soles of his boots whistle like blackbirds, or (occasionally) 
oysters. He wears a black stock, the original satin fabric of 
which has gone away mournfully into shreds, and shows a 
dingy white substance beneath, wavering in appearance be- 
tween sackcloth and -buckram. It is rumoured that Corney 
O'Gripper has been a hedge schoolmaster, a coast- guardsman, 
an illicit whisky-distiller, a guager, a sapper and miner, a 
pawnbroker, a surgeon on the coast of Africa, a temperance 
lecturer, a repealer, a fishmonger, a parish clerk, an advertis- 
ing agent, a servants' registry office-keeper, a supercargo, a 
collector of rents, a broker's man, an actor, a roulette table- 
keeper on a race-course, a publican, a betting office-keeper, an 
itinerant, a lawyer's clerk, a county court bailiff, and a life 
assurance actuary. He confesses himself to have been a 
"tacher;" also to having been in America, where he did 
something considerable in town-lots, in the bank-notes known 
as shin plaisters, and where he was blown up in a Mississippi 
steam-boat ; also to having passed twice through the Insolvent 
Court. His present profession, and one that he glories in, is 
that of a " promoter." A promoter of what ? Companies. 
He knows of a Spanish galleon sunk in the bay of Vera Cruz, 



The Golden Calf. 47 

in Admiral Hosier's time, with two millions five hundred and 
seventy thousand pounds sterling in doubloons, pillar dollars, 
and golden candlesticks destined for the chapel of our St. Jago 
of Compostella, on board. A joint stock company is just the 
thing to fish her up, and secure a bonus of two hundred and 
forty per cent, to every one of the shareholders. He only 
wants a few good men to complete the list of directors of the 
Great Female Moses Company, or Emporium of Ladies' 
Eeady-made Wearing Apparel Society. Lend him sixpence 
and he will be enabled provisionally to register the Curing 
Herrings on the North-west Coast of Ireland Company. He 
is to be managing director of the Persons-condemned-to- 
Capital-Punishment Life Assurance Society ; he promoted the 
Joint Stock Housebreakers' Investment Company ; the Naval, 
Military, European, and General Pickpockets' Savings Bank 
and Sick Eund ; the Amalgamated Society for binding and 
illustrating Cheesemongers' and Trunkmakers' Wastepaper ; 
the Mutual Silver Snuff-box Yoting Company ; the Bank- 
rupts' Guarantee Eund ; and the Insolvents' Provident Insti- 
tution. But the world has dealt hardly with him. No sooner 
has he promoted companies and set them on their legs, than 
solicitors have flouted, directors repudiated him. He has 
nothing left now but his inextinguishable brogue, and his 
inexhaustible invention. He will go on promoting till he 
goes to utter penury, brokendownedness, and the workhouse ; 
and let me whisper it to you, among all the wild, impossible, 
crazy " schames " to which the tufted head of Corney O'Grip- 
per has given birth, there have been some not quite wanting 
in feasibility and success. There are at this moment com- 
panies with lofty-sounding names — with earls for chairmen ; 



48 Dutch Pictures. 

companies that spend thousands a year in advertisements, 
and have grand offices in Cannon Street and branch offices in 
Waterloo Place — that were in the origin promoted by this 
poor ragged creature, who is not too proud to sit on the 
tap-room bench in the Hades under Capel Court : who is 
only too happy to borrow ninepence, and who sleeps no one 
knows where, and feeds on fried fish, baked potatoes, saveloys, 
penny ham sandwiches and meat pies, when he is lucky 
enough even to be able to procure those simple viands. 

Thus wags the world in the place I do not care to name. 
I wonder what should set — humph — Hades — running in my 
head this evening, and move me to descant upon it, for it is 
more than a year agone since I was there. What have the 
pewter pots, the rank tobacco, the shabby men, the fried beef- 
steaks and onions, the rummers of spirits and the sawdust of 
that old English Inferno in common with the pier-glass and 
arabesque decorated cafe, the marble table and crimson velvet 
couches where I sit — the opal-like scintillating glass of absinthe 
I am imbibing on the great Paris Boulevard, hard by the 
Cafe de 1' Opera ? I have not been to the Bourse to-day, 
though I know that great screaming, tumbling, temple of 
Mammon well, and of old : its hot, reeking atmosphere, the 
snow storm of torn scraps of paper on its pavement ; the 
great inner and outer rings where the bulls and bears offer, 
refuse, scream, and gesticulate at each other like madmen; 
the lofty galleries where crowds of idlers, mostly in blouses, 
lounge with crossed arms over the balustrades, lazily listening 
to the prodigious clamour that rises to the vaulted roof — 
the Kyrie Eleison of the worshippers of Mammon ; the decep- 
tive frescoes on the cornices that look so like bas-reliefs ; the 



The Golden Calf. 49 

ushers in uniform darting about with the course of exchange 
lists ; the municipal guards and gendarmes ; the nursery maids 
and children that come here for amusement (where will not nur- 
sery maids and children come ?), the trebly serried ranks of 
private carriages, fiacres and cabriolets in the place outside. 
No, I have not been to the Bourse. I sit quietly smoking a 
penny cigar and imbibing eight sous worth of absinthe prepa- 
ratory to going to my friend Madame Busque's to dinner. 
Whatever can put Hades into my head this December even- 
ing I wonder? 

This. The cafe where I sit (I was all unconscious of 
it before) is Hades; and in its pier-glassed precincts from 
five to seven every evening, sometimes later, the adorers 
of the Golden Calf go through their orisons (oh forgive 
me if I am free-tongued ! ) like the very deuce. For 
know you that, the Bourse being closed, the gaping for gain 
is by no means closed in the hearts of men. They rush 
to this cafe, hard by the Passage de 1'Opera and get up a little 
Bourse of their own — an illegitimate Bourse be it understood, 
and one, when its members are detected in speculating, 
treated with considerable severity by the government. Be- 
fore I have been in the place ten minutes Sebastopol has been 
taken, — retaken — the allies defeated — kings and emperors 
assassinated twenty times over. Bank notes, Napoleons, and 
five franc pieces are strewn on the table amidst absinthe 
glasses, dominoes, decanters, and cigar ends. Moustachioed 
men lean over my shoulder and shake pencils at their opposite 
neighbours fiercely. Seedy men sit silent, in corners ; pros- 
perous speculators pay with shining gold. Shrieks of mngt- 
cinq i trente, quatre-vingt-cina are bandied about like insults. 

E 



50 



Dutch Pictures. 



It is the old under-Capel-Court Inferno with a few mous- 
taches, some plate-glass, and a ribbon or two of the Legion 
of Honour ; and as I ^finish my absinthe in the din, I seem 
to see the Golden Calf on the marble, plate-covered counter, 
very rampant indeed. 




Y. 

A NEW RAILWAY LINE. 

IF I succeed in the object I have proposed to myself in this 
paper, I shall consider that I am entitled to the grati- 
tude of all poets, present and to come. For I shall have 
found them a new subject for verse : a discovery, I submit, 
as important as that of a new metal, or of a new motive power, 
a new pleasure, a new pattern for shawls, a new colour,or a new 
system of philosophy. No member of the tuneful craft ; no 
gentleman whose eyes are in the habit of rolling in a fine frenzy; 
no sentimental young lady with an album will deny that the 
whole present domain of poetry is exhausted : — that it has 
been surveyed, travelled over, explored, ticketed, catalogued, 
classified, analysed and used up to the last inch of ground, to 
the last petal of the last flower, to the last blade of grass. 
Every poetical subject has been worn as threadbare as Sir 
John Cutler's stockings. The sea, its blueness, depth, 
vastness, raininess, freedom, noisiness, calmness, darkness, 
and brightness ; its weeds and waves and finny denizens . 
its laughter, wailings, sighings, and deep bellowings ; the 
ships that sail, and the boats that dance, and the tempests 
that howl over it ; the white winged birds that skim above its 
"billows ; the great whales, and sharks, and monsters, to us 

E 2 



52 Dutch Pictures. 

yet unknown, that disport themselves in its lowest depths, 
and swinge the scaly horrors of their folded tails in its salt 
hiding places ; the mermaids that ply their mirrors, and comb 
their tresses in its coral caves ; the sirens that sing fathoms 
farther than plummet ever sounded ; the jewels and gold 
that lie hidden in its caverns, measureless to man ; the dead 
that it is to give up : — the Sea, and all pertaining to it, have 
been sung dry these thousand years. We heard the roar of its 
billows in the first line of the Iliad, and Mr. Mugg, the comic 
singer, will sing about it this very night at the North Wool- 
wich Gardens, in connection with the Gravesend steamer, the 
steward, certain basins, and a boiled leg of mutton. 

As for the Sun, he has had as many verses written about 
him as he is miles distant from the earth. His heat, bright- 
ness, roundness, and smiling face ; his incorrigible propen- 
sities for getting up in the east and going to bed in the west; 
his obliging disposition in tipping the hills with gold, and 
bathing the evening sky with crimson, have all been sung. 
Every star in the firmament has had a stanza ; Saturn's 
rings have all had their posies, and Mars, Venus and 
Jupiter, have all been chanted. As for the poor illused 
Moon, she has been ground on every barrel-organ in Par- 
nassus since poetry existed. Her pallid complexion, chastity 
or lightness of conduct, treacherous, contemplative, or secre- 
tive disposition, her silvery or sickly smile, have all been 
over- celebrated in verse. And everything else belonging to 
the sky — the clouds, murky, purple, or silver lined, the hail, 
the rain, the snow, the rainbow, the wind in its circuits, the 
fowls that fly, and the insects that hover — they have all had 
their poets, and too many of them. 



A New Railway Line. 53 

Is there anything new in poetry, I ask, to be said about 
Love? Surely that viand has been done to rags. We have 
it with every variety of dressing. Love and madness ; 
love and smiles, tears, folly, crime, innocence, and charity. 
We have had love in a village, a palace, a cottage, a camp, 
a prison, and a tub. We have had the loves of pirates, 
highwaymen, lords and ladies, shepherds and shepherdesses ; 
the Loves of the Angels and the Loves of the New Police. 
Canning was even good enough to impress the abstruse 
science of mathematics into the service of Poetry and Love ; 
and to sing about the loves of ardent axioms, postulates, 
tangents, oscillation, cissoids, conchoids the square of the 
hypothenuse, asymptotes, parabolas, and conic sections — in 
short, all the Loves of the Triangles. Doctor Darwin gave 
us the Loves of the Plants, and in the economy of vegetation 
we had the loves of granite rocks, argillaceous strata, 
noduled flints, blue clay, silica, quartz, and the limestone 
formation. We have had in connection with love in poetry 
hearts, darts, spells, wrath, despair, withering smiles, burn- 
ing tears, sighs, roses, posies, pearls and other precious 
stones ; blighted hopes, beaming eyes, misery, wretchedness, 
and unutterable woe. It is too much. Everything is worn 
out. The whole of the flower-garden, from the brazen sun- 
flower to the timid violet, has been exhausted long ago. All 
the birds in the world could never sing so loud or so long as 
the poets have sung about them. The bards have sung right 
through Lempriere's Classical Dictionary, Buffon's Natural 
History, Malte-Brun's Geography — for what country, city, 
mountain, or stream, remains unsung ? — and the Biographie 
Universelle to boot. Every hero, and almost every scoundrel, 



54 Dutch Pictures. 

has had his epic. We have had the poetical Pleasures of Hope, 
Memory, Imagination, and Friendship ; likewise the Vanity 
of Human Wishes, the Fallacies of Hope, and the Triumphs 
of Temper. The heavenly muse has sung of man's first 
disobedience, and the mortal fruit of the forbidden tree, that 
brought Death into the world and all our woes. The honest 
muse has arisen and sung the Man of Koss. All the battles 
that ever were fought — all the arms and all the men — have 
been celebrated in numbers. Arts, commerce, laws, learn- 
ing, and our old nobility, have had their poet. Suicide has 
found a member of the Court of Apollo musical and morbid 
enough to sing self-murder ; and the Corn Laws have been 
rescued from Elue Books, and enshrined in Ballads. Mr. 
Pope has called upon my Lord Boliugbroke to awake, and 
" expatiate free o'er all this scene of man ; " and the 
pair have, together, passed the whole catalogue of human 
virtues and vices in review. Drunkenness has been sung; so 
has painting, so has music. Poems have been written on 
the Art of Poetry. The Grave has been sung. The earth, 
and the waters under it, and the fearsome region under that ; 
its " adamantine chains and penal fires ;" its " ever burning 
sulphur unconsumed," its " darkness visible," its burning 
marl and sights of terror. We have heard the last lays of 
all the Last Minstrels, and the Last Man has had his say, 
or rather his song, under the auspices of Campbell. Money has 
been sung. We have had "Miss Kielmansegg and her golden 
leg," likewise " a song of sixpence." The harp that once 
hung in Tara's halls has not a string left, and nobody ought 
to play upon it any more. 

Take instead, oh ye poets, the wires of the Electric Tele- 



A New Railway Line. 55 

graph, and run your tuneful fingers over the chords. Sing 
the poetry of Kailways. But what can there be of the poetical, 
or even of the picturesque, element in a Eailway ? Trunk 
lines, branch-lines, loop-lines, and sidings ; cuttings, embank- 
ments, gradients, curves, and inclines; points, shuntings, 
switches, sleepers, fog-signals, and turn-tables ; locomotives, 
break-vans, buffers, tenders, and whistles ; platforms, tun- 
nels, tubes, goods-sheds, return-tickets, axle-grease, cattle- 
trains, pilot-engines, time-tables, and coal-trucks ; all these 
are eminently prosaic matter-of-fact things, determined, mea- 
sured and maintained by line and rule, by the chapter and verse 
of printed regulations and bye-laws signed by Directors and 
Secretaries, and allowed by Commissioners of Kailways. Can 
there be any poetry in the Secretary's office ; in dividends, 
debentures, scrip, preference-shares, and deferred bonds 1 
Is there any poetry in Eailway time — the atrociously matter- 
of-fact system of calculation that has corrupted the half-past 
two o'clock of the old watchman into " two-thirty ? " Is 
Bradshaw poetical? Are Messrs. Pickford, or Chaplin and 
Home poetical ? How the deuce (I put words into my oppo- 
nent's mouths) are you to get any poetry out of that dreariest 
combination of parallel lines, a railroad; — parallel rails, parallel 
posts, parallel wires, parallel stations, and parallel termini ? 

As if there could be anything poetical about a Bailroad ! 
I hear Gusto the great fine art critic and judge of Literature 
say this with a sneer, turning up his fine Koman nose mean- 
while. Poetry on a Eailway ! cries Prosycard, the man of 
business — nonsense ! There may be some nonsensical verses 
or so in the books that Messrs. W. H. Smith and Sons sell 
at their stalls at the different stations ; but Poetry on or in 



56 Dutch Pictures. 

the Eailway itself — ridiculous ! Poetry on the Eail ! echoes 
Heavypace, the commercial traveller — fudge ! I travel fifteen 
thousand miles by railway every year. I know every line, 
branch, and station in Great Britain. I never saw any poetry 
on the Rail. And a crowd of passengers, directors, share- 
holders, engine-drivers, guards, stokers, station-masters, sig- 
nal-men, and porters, with, I am ashamed to fear, a consider- 
able proportion of the readers of " Dutch Pictures," seem 
to the ears of my mind, to take up the cry, to laugh scorn- 
fully at the preposterous idea of there being possibly any such 
a thing as poetry connected with so matter-of-fact an institu- 
tion as a Eailway, and to look upon me in the light of a 
fantastic visionary. 

But I have tied myself to the stake ; nailed my colours 
to the mast ; drawn the sword and thrown away the scab- 
bard : in fact, I have written the title of this article, and 
must abide the issue. 

Take a Tunnel — in all its length, its utter darkness, its 
dank coldness and tempestuous windiness. To me a Tunnel 
is all poetry. To be suddenly snatched away from the light 
of day, from the pleasant companionship of the fleecy clouds, 
the green fields spangled with flowers, the golden wheat, the 
fantastically changing embankments, — now geological, now 
floral, now rocky, now chalky ; the hills, the valleys, and the 
winding streams ; the high mountains in the distance, that 
know they are emperors of the landscape, and so wear purple 
robes right imperially ; the silly sheep in the meadows, that 
graze so contentedly, unwotting that John Hinds the butcher 
is coming down by the next train to purchase them for the 
slaughter-house ; the little lambs that are not quite up to 



A New Railway Line. 57 

railway-trains, their noise and bustle and smoke, yet, and that 
scamper nervously away, carrying their simple tails behind 
them ; the sententious cattle that munch, and lazily watch 
the steam from the funuel as it breaks into fleecy rags of 
vapour, and then fall to munching again; — to be hurried 
from all these into pitchy obscurity, seems to me poetical and 
picturesque in the extreme. It is like death in the midst of 
life, a sudden suspension of vitality — the gloom and terror of 
the grave pouncing like a hawk upon the warmth and cheer- 
fulness of life. Many an ode, many a ballad could be written 
on that dark and gloomy tunnel — the whirring roar and 
scream and jarr of echoes, the clanging of wheels, the strange 
voices that seem to make themselves heard as the train rushes 
through the tunnel, — now in passionate supplication, now in 
fierce anger and loud invective, now in an infernal chorus of 
fiendish mirth and demoniac exultation, now in a loud and 
long-continued though inarticulate screech — a meaningless 
howl like the raving of a madman. To understand and appre- 
ciate a tunnel in its full aspect of poetic and picturesque horror, 
you should travel in a third-class carriage. To first and some- 
times to second-class passengers the luxury of lamplight is by 
the gracious favour of the Directors of the company condescend- 
ingly extended ; and in passing through a tunnel they are 
enabled dimly to descry their fellow-travellers ; but for the 
third-class voyager darkness, both outer and inner, are pro- 
vided — darkness so complete and so intense, that as we are 
borne invisibly on our howling way, dreadful thoughts spring 
up in our minds of blindness ; that we have lost our sight 
for ever ! Yainly we endeavour to peer through the darkness, 
to strain onr eyes to descry one ray of light, one outline—* 



58 Dutch PicJures. 

be it ever so dim — of a human figure ; one thin bead of day 
upon a panel, a ledge, a window-sill, or a door. Is there 
not matter for bards in all this ? — in the length of the tunnel, 
its darkness and clamour ; in the rage and fury of the engine 
eating its strong heart, burnt up by inward fire like a man 
consumed by his own passions ; in the seemingly everlasting 
duration of the deprival from light and day and life ; but a 
deprival which ends at last. Ah, how glad and welcome 
that restoration to sunshine is ! We seem to have had a sore 
and dangerous sickness, and to be suddenly and graciously 
permitted to rise from a bed of pain and suffering, and enter 
at once into the enjoyment of the rudest health, with all its com- 
forts and enjoyments, with all its cheerful pleasures and happy 
forgetfulness of the ills that are gone, and unconsciousness of 
the ills that are to come, and that must come, and surely. 

Whenever I pass through a tunnel I meditate upon these 
things, and wish heartily that I were a poet, that I might 
tune my heart to sing the poetry of railway tunnels. I don't 
know whether the same thoughts strike other people. I 
suppose they do, — I hope they do. It may be that I muse 
more on tunnels, and shape their length and blackness, and 
coldness and noise, to subjects fit to be wedded to immortal 
verse; because I happen to reside on a railway, and that 
almost every morning and evening throughout the week I 
have to pass through a tunnel of prodigious length, — to say 
the truth, nearly as long as the Box Tunnel, on the Great 
Western Eailway. Morning and night we dash from the 
fair fields of Kent, — from the orchards and the hop-gardens, — 
from the sight of the noble river in the distance, with its 
boats and barges and huge ships, into this Erebus, pitch 



A New Railway Line. 59 

dark, nearly three miles long, and full of horrid noises. 
Sometimes I travel in the lamp-lit carriages, and then I find 
it poetical to watch the flickering gleams of the sickly light 
upon shrouded figures, muffled closely in railway rugs and 
mantles and shawls, — the ladies, who cower timidly in cor- 
ners ; the children, who, half-pleased, half-frightened, don't 
seem to know whether to laugh or cry, and compromise the 
matter by sitting with their mouths wide open, and inces- 
santly asking why it is getting dark, and why there is such a 
noise. Sometimes, and I am not ashamed to confess, much 
more frequently, I make my journey in the poor man's 
carriage — the " parly, " or third-class. In that humble 
" parly " train, believe me, there is much more railway 
poetry attainable than in the more aristocratic compartments. 
Total darkness, more noise (for the windows are generally 
open, and the reverberation is consequently much greater), 
more mocking voices, more mystery, and more romance. I 
have even gone through tunnels in those vile open standing- 
lip cars, called by an irreverant public " pig-boxes," and 
seemingly provided by railway directors as a cutting reproach 
on, and stern punishment for, poverty. Yet I have drunk 
deeply of railway poetry in a " pig-box." There is some- 
thing grand, there is something noble ; there is something 
really sublime in the gradual melting away of the darkness 
into light ; in the decadence of total eclipse and the glorious 
restoration of the sun to his golden rights again. Standing 
up in the coverless car you see strange, dim, fantastic, 
changing shapes above you. The daylight becomes irriguous, 
like dew, upon the steam from the funnel, the roofs of the 
carriages, the brickwork sides of the tunnel itself. But 



60 Dutch Pictures. 

nothing is denned, nothing fixed ; all the shapes are irreso- 
lute, fleeting, confused ; like the events in the memory of an 
old man. The Tunnel becomes a phantom tube — a dry- 
Styx — the train seems changed into Charon's boat, and the 
engine-driver turns into the infernal ferryman. And the end 
of that awful navigation must surely be Tartarus. You think 
so, you fancy yourself in the boat, as Dante and Virgil were 
in the Divine Comedy ; ghosts cling to the sides, vainly 
repenting, uselessly lamenting- Erancesca of Eimini floats 
despairing by ; far off, mingled with the rattle of wheels, are 
heard the famine-wrung moans of Ugolino's children. Hark, to 
that awful shrilly, hideous, prolonged yell — a scream like that 
they say that Catherine of Eussia gave on her deathbed, and 
which, years afterwards, was wont to haunt the memories of 
those that had heard it. Lord be good to us ! there is the 
scream again ; it is the first scream of a lost spirit's last 
agony ; the cry of the child of earth waking up into the Ever 
and Ever of pain ; it is Eacinata screaming in her sepulchre 
of flames — no, it is simply the railway whistle as the train 
emerges from the tunnel into sunlight again. The ghosts 
vanish, there are no more horrible sights and noises, no flying 
sparks, no red lamps at intervals like demon eyes. I turn 
back in the " pig-box," and look at the arched entrance to 
the tunnel we have just quitted. I seemed to fancy there 
should be an inscription over it bidding all who enter to leave 
Hope behind ; but instead of that there is simply, hard by, a 
placard on a post relative to cattle straying on the railway. 

A railway accident ! Ah, poets ! how much of poetry 
could you find in that, were you so minded ! Odes and bal- 
lads, sapphics, alcaics and dactylics, strophes, chorusses and 



A New Railway Line. 61 

semi-chorusses might be sung — rugged poems, rough as the 
rocky numbers of Ossian, soothing poems, " soft pity to 
infuse," running " softly sweet in Lydian measure" upon the 
woes of railway accidents, the widowhoods and orphanages 
that have been made by the carelessness of a driver, a faulty 
engine, an unturned " point," a mistaken signal. Think of 
the bride of yesterday, the first child of our manhood, the 
last child of our age, think of the dear friend who has been 
absent for years, who has been estranged from us by those 
whispering tongues that poison truth, and is coming swiftly 
along the iron road to be reconciled to us at last. Think of 
these all torn from us by a sudden, cruel, unprepared-ibr 
death ; think of these, falling upon that miserable battle-field, 
without glory, without foes to fight with, yet with fearfuller, 
ghastlier hurts, with more carnage and horror in destruction 
than you could meet with even on those gory Chersonean 
battle-fields after storms of shot and shell, after the fierce 
assaults of the bayonet's steel, and the trampling of the 
horses, and the stroke of the sharp sword. There are bards 
to wail over the warrior who falls in the fray, for the horse 
and his rider blasted by the crimson whirlwind. There are 
tears and songs for the dead that the sea engulfs, to cradle 
them in its blue depths till Time and Death shall be no more. 
There are elegies and epitaphs and mourning verses for those 
that sleep in the churchyard, that have laid their heads upon 
a turf, that eat their salad from the roots, that dwell with 
worms, and entertain creeping things in the cells and little 
chambers of their eyes. There is poetry even for the mur- 
derer on his gibbet ; but who cares to sing the railway 
victim? who bids the line restore its dead? who adjures 



62 Dutch Pictures. 

the engine to bring back the true and brave? They are 
killed, and are buried ; the inquest meet ; the jurymen give 
their verdict, and forget all about it two days afterwards. 
Somebody is tried for manslaughter and acquitted, for, of 
course, there is nobody to blame ? It is all over, and the 
excursion train, crammed with jovial excursionists, sweet- 
hearts, married couples, clubs of gay fellows, laughing chil- 
dren, baskets of prog, bottles of beer, and surreptitious, yet 
officially connived at, pipes ; the engine dressed in ribbons, 
the stoker — Oh, wonder! — in a clean shirt; the excursion 
train, I say, rattles gaily over the very place where, a month 
since, the Accident took place ; over the very spot where the 
earth drank up blood, and the rails were violently wrenched 
and twisted, and the sleepers were ensanguined, and death, 
and havoc and desolation were strewn all around, and the 
wild flowers in the embankment were scalded with the steam 
from the shattered boiler.* 

Can you form an idea, poets, of an haunted line ? Sup- 
pose the same excursion train I was speaking of to be on its 
way home, late at night, say from Cripplegate- super-mare or 
Bufimgton Wells. Everybody has enjoyed himself very 
much — the children are tired, but happy. The bonnets of 
the married ladies have made their proper impression upon 
the population of Cripplegate-super-mare, and they are satis- 
fied with them, their husbands, and themselves. The mar- 
ried gentlemen have found out of what the contents of the 
black bottle consisted — they smoke pipes openly now, quite 

* Lest I should be suspected of having endeavoured to make " capital" 
out of recent catastrophes I may be allowed to state that this paper 
was written nearly seven years ago. 



A New Railway Line. 63 

defiant, if not oblivious, of bye-laws and forty-shilling fines. 
Nobody objects to smoking — not even the asthmatical old 
gentleman in the respirator and the red comforter — not even 
the tall lady, with the severe countenance and the green 
umbrella, who took the mild fair man in spectacles so sharply 
to task this morning about the mild cigar which he was 
timidly smoking up the sleeve of his poncho. Even the 
guards and officials at the stations do not object to smoking 
One whiskered individual of the former class, ordinarily the 
terror of the humble third-class passenger, whom he, with 
fierce contempt, designates as " you, sir,'* and hauls out of 
the carriage on the slightest provocation, condescends to be 
satirical on the smoke subject ; he puts his head in at the 
window, and asks the passengers " how they like it — mild or 
full flavoured?" This is a joke, and everybody, of course, 
laughs immensely, and goes on smoking unmolested. Bless 
me ! how heartily we can laugh at the jokes of people we are 
afraid of, or want to cringe to for a purpose. 

Surely a merrier excursion train than this was never due at 
the Babylon Bridge Station at " eleven-thirty." Funny stories 
are told. A little round man, in a grey coat, and a hat like 
a sailor's sings a comic song seven miles long, for he begins 
it at one station and ends it at another seven miles distant. 
A pretty, timorous widow is heard softly joining in the chorus 
of " tol de rol lol." A bilious man of melancholy mien, 
hitherto speechless, volunteers a humourous recitation, and 
promises feats of conjuring after they have passed the next 
station. Strangers are invited to drink out of strange bottles, 
and drink. Everybody is willing to take everybody's chil- 
dren on his knee. People pencil down addresses by the 



64 Dutch Pictures. 

lamplight, and exchange them with people opposite, hoping 
that they shall become better acquainted. The select clubs of 
jolly fellows are very happy — they even say " vrappy." 
There is laughing, talking, jesting, courting, and tittering. 
None are silent but those who are asleep. Hurrah for this 
jovial excursion train, for the Nor-Nor-West-by-Eastern Bail- 
way Company, its cheap fares and admirable management ! 

Suppose that just at the spot where this allegro train now 
is, there occurred the great accident of last July. You re- 
member, the excursion train, through some error, the cause of 
which was unfortunately never discovered, ran into the lug- 
gage train ! the driver and stoker of the former were dashed to 
pieces — thirty -three persons were killed or wounded. Suppose 
some man of poetical temperament, of fantastic imagination, 
of moody fancies were in the carriage of this merry train to- 
night, looking from the window, communing with the yellow 
moonlight, the light clouds placidly floating along the sea of 
heaven as if sure of a safe anchorage at last. He knows the 
line, he knows the place where that grim accident was — he 
muses on it — yes ; this was the spot, there lay the bodies. 

Heavens and earth ! suppose the lines were haunted ! 
See, from a siding comes slowly, noiselessly along the rails 
the Phantom Train ! There is no rattle of wheels, no 
puffing and blowing of the locomotive, only from time to time 
the engine whistle is heard in a fitful, murmuring, wailing 
gust of sound ; the lamps in front bum blue, sickly lambent 
flames leap from the funnel and the furnace door. The car- 
riages are lamplit too, but with corpse candles. The car- 
riages themselves are mere skeletons — they are all shattered, 
dislocated, ruined, yet, by some deadly principle of cohesion, 



A New Railway Line. 65 

they keep together, and through the interstices of their crack- 
ing ribs and framework you see the passengers. Horrible 
sight to see ! Some have limbs bound up in splinters, some 
lie on stretchers, but they have all Faces and Eyes : and the 
eyes and the faces, together with the phantom guard with 
his lantern, from which long rays of ghastly light proceed ; 
together with the phantom driver, with his jaw bound up ; 
the phantom stoker, who stokes with a mattock and spade, 
and feeds the fire as though he were making a grave ; the 
phantom commercial travellers wrapped in shrouds for rail- 
way rugs ; the pair of lovers in the first-class coupe locked 
in the embrace of death in which they were found after the 
accident, the stout old gentleman with his head in his lap, 
the legs of the man, the rest of whose body was never found, 
but who still has a face and eyes, the skeletons of horses in 
the horseboxes, the stacks of coffins in the luggage vans (for 
all is transparent, and you can see the fatal verge of the em- 
bankment beyond, through the train). All these sights of 
horror flit continually past, up and down, backwards and 
forwards, haunting the line where the accident was. 

But, ah me ! these are, perhaps, but silly fancies after all. 
Respectability may be right, and there may be no more 
poetry in a railway than in my boots. Yet I should like to 
find poetry in everything, even in boots. I am afraid rail- 
ways are ugly t dull, prosaic, straight ; yet the line of beauty, 
Hogarth tells us, is a curve, and curves you may occasionally 
find on the straightest of railways — and where beauty is, 
poetry, you may be sure of it, is not far off. I am not 
quite sure but you may find it in ugliness too, if there be 
anything beautiful in your own mind. 

F 



VI. 



WANT PLACES. 



T CABEFULLY peruse every day the "Want Places 5 ' 
-*- columns of the Times newspaper. As I shall presently 
shew, I happen to know most of the advertisers, and intend 
to introduce them to public notice. The ladies first : — 

AS HOUSEKEEPER to a nobleman or gentleman, a respectable 
middle-aged party, fully conversant with ber duties. Unexception- 
able references. Address — K. G., 3, Preserve Street, Piccallilly Gardens. 

Mrs. Barbara Blundy is the " party." She is fond of 
mentioning, casually, that she was born in eighteen hundred 
and twenty, but she is, at least, fifty; stiff, starch, demure. 
Two bands of well-pomatumed brown hair, and two thin 
pendants of corkscrew ringlets, stand perpetually on duty, on 
either side of her severe cap, caparisoned with grey ribbons of 
price ; Mrs. Blundy's keys and keybasket are her inseparable 
companions. She carries the one, and she jingles the others, 
with an inflexible rigidity of purpose. Her dress is of iron grey, 
and in it, with her iron keys, she looks like the gaoler, as she 
is, of the pickles and preserves ; the Charon of the still-room, 
the Aiecto of the linen-chest, the Megaera of the housemaids, 
the Tisiphone of domestic economy. From her waist descends 



Want Places, 67 

a silken apron of rich but sober hues, supposed to have 
been originally a genuine Bandanna handkerchief, one, indeed, 
of a set presented to her by General Sir Bulteel Bango, 
K.C.B., formerly colonel of the Old Hundredth regiment 
(raised by Colonel Sternhold in sixteen hundred and ninety- 
one, and known in the Low Country campaigns as Hopkins's 
foot). Mrs. Blundy wears a spray of ambiguous transparencies, 
accepted, by a great exertion of faith by those who pay her 
court, to be Irish diamonds ; but which bear a stronger 
resemblance to the glass drops of a byegone girandole. After- 
noon and evening she dons a black, stiff, rustling, silk dress 
— like a board, as I have heard ladies say. None of your 
fal-de-ral lavender boots, but rigid, unmistakeable shoes of 
Cordovan leather, with broad sandals, and stout soles. No 
gewgaws, or vain lappets for Mrs. Blundy, when it pleases 
her to walk abroad; but a severe, composed, decorous, 
comfortable, grey plaid shawl, a real sable muff (how the cook 
envies it ! ), a drawn silk bonnet, black kid gloves of staunch 
Lamb's Conduit Street make, and the keys in a reticule, like 
a silken travelling-bag. On Sunday evening she sweeps round 
the corner to chapel, and " sits under " the Reverend Nahum 
Gilly whack (of Lady Mullington's connection), and afterwards, 
perchance, condescends to partake of a neat supper of some- 
thing warm at Mr. Chives's, formerly a butler, but now a 
greengrocer (and a widower), in Orchard Street. 

When Mrs. Blundy is " suited " in a nobleman's or gen- 
tleman's family — as she was at Lady Leviathan's, in Plesio- 
saurus Square — she becomes a fearful and wonderful spectacle. 
She moves down the back stairs with the dignity of a duchess 
who has come that way by mistake. Yet she is profoundly 

F 2 



68 Dutch Pictures. 

humble. She hdpes (oh, how humbly!) that she knows her 
place. To see her curtsey to Lady Leviathan you would 
imagine that she was wont to stand on a descending platform 
instead of on a square of carpet — so low did she bend. Mrs. 
Blundy considered Miss Poonah (governess to the Honourables 
Bovina and Lardina Lambert, her ladyship's eldest daughters) 
as a very well behaved "young person," highly accomplished, 
no doubt; but with a want of "moral fitness;" an ambiguous 
expression which told immensely with the schoolroom maid, 
who stated that it exactly tallied with her opinion of Miss 
Poonah, who was, sTie should say, a "stuck up thing." 

Mrs. Blundy left Lady Leviathan's in consequence of a 
" difficulty" with the lady's maid respecting Mr. Chives. 

Mrs. Blundy is not " suited " just now, and she is 
temporarily residing at a serious butcher's, in a narrow court? 
behind a great church, at the West End, wherein Mr. Cuffe,. 
the beadle, not unfrequently condescends to insert his gold- 
laced person, and to purchase a plump chump chop, or a 
succulent lamb's fry. When Mrs. Blundy is "suited " (which 
will be soon, for her references are unexceptionable), she will 
rule the roast as completely as ever. She practises, perhaps 
unconsciously, Frederic Barbarossa's maxim — " Who can 
dissimulate can reign." She will bully the still-room maid, 
and the footman, and Heaven only help the housemaids ! 
The terrible lectures they will have to endure on the sinfulness 
of ribbons, and the " unloveliness of lovelocks," the perdition 
of jewellery ! The dismal anecdotes they will have to endure 
of errant housemaids who, disregarding the advice of their 
pastors and friends — the housekeepers — fell into evil ways, 
and were afterwards seen walking in the Park on Sunday, 



Want Places. 69 

with fourteen flounces one above the other, and leaning on 
the arms of Life-Guardsmen. All this will be, as it has been 
before, when Mrs. Blundy is " suited." 

To be housekeeper to a duchess is the culminating point 
of Mrs. Blundy's ambition. To dine with the groom of the 
chambers, and my lord duke's steward — to have her own still- 
room footman behind her own still-room chair — to hear the 
latest Court news from her grace's lady's maid, or fromMonsieur 
Anatole, the hair-dresser, invited in to partake of a glass of 
''London particular" Madeira. ' These, with the comfortable 
perspective of a retiring pension, or of a stately superannuation 
at his grace's great show-house in Hampshire ; with rich fees 
for shewing Claudes and Petitots, Sevres porcelain and Gobelin 
tapestry, to visitors. Any duchess, therefore, who may want 
such a person, will know where to apply. 

A S HOUSEKEEPER to a Single or Invalid Gentleman, a Single 
-^*- Person of experience. Can be highly recommended. Address, 
Alpha, at Mr. Mutts, 12, Kingsgate Street, Holborn. 

Attached relatives and friends of Sir Dian Limes, Bart. — 
who, beyond occasional aberrations and delusions respecting 
his head being a beehive, and himself heir to the throne of 
Great Britain, is a harmless, helpless, paralytic, bedridden 
old gentleman enough — may be safely assured that Alpha is 
the housekeeper for him — Alpha, otherwise represented by 
Miss Budd. 

Mr. Mutts, trunkmaker, of Kingsgate Street, Holborn, 
knows Miss Eudd. Does he not ? Ugh ! Who but a meek, 
quiet, little, widowed, trunkmaker, with three daughters 
(grown up, and all inclined to redness at the nose), would 
know that terrible female, half as long as he has done ? She 



7o Dutch PiBures. 

lodges with him in the frequent intervals between her situations. 
" Hang her, she do" say Mutts to himself, as he is busy at 
work. And, as he says it, he gives a nail, which he fancies 
has a Euddish appearance, such an exasperated rap, that 
Grapp, his apprentice, begins rapping at his nails, in 
professional emulation, harder than ever; and the two 
between them engender such a storm of raps that Mr. Ferret, 
the surly attorney opposite, sends across with his compliments, 
and really he shall be obliged to indict Mr. Mutts for a 
nuisance — indeed he shall. 

Miss Eudd — she is tall, lanky, and bony ! She has some 
jet ornaments, in heavy links, about her neck ; but, resembling 
the fetters over the gate of the Old Bailey, they have not a 
decorative effect. She wears a faded black merino dress, the 
reflections from which are red with rust. Her feet are long 
and narrow, like canoes. Her hands, when she has those 
hideous black mittens on, always remind me of unboiled 
lobsters. 

When Judith Jael Mutts, aged twenty-three years, tells 
her father that Miss Rudd — having left Mrs. Major Morpuss's 
family, in consequence of the levity of Miss Corpus, that 
lady's niece — is, pending her acceptance of another engagement, 
coming to stay a week in Kingsgate Street, the poor man breaks 
out into a cold perspiration — yet his daughter Judith always 
adds, " Eeally Miss Eudd is such a superior person, and has 
so strict a sense of her moral mission, that we should all be 
benefited (a glance at Mutts over his Sunday newspaper) by 
her stay." Mutts knows that it is all over with this said 
newspaper during Miss Eudd's stay, which, though announced 
as to be only of a week's duration, he knows, from sad 



Want Places. 7 1 

experience, will, very probably, be indefinitely protracted. 
Miss Eudd's moral mission ordinarily involves an unusual 
tartness of temper in Mr. Mutt's three amiable daughters ; 
it makes — on the general question of theology at meal times, 
and extra exposure to being "worreted" — Grapp's, the 
apprentice's, life a temporary burden to him. There is no 
rest for Mr. Mutts while the single gentleman's housekeeper 
is good enough to lodge with him. He is in daily perturbation 
lest Miss Eudd should take his state of widowerhood as a 
state of sin ; and, willing or not willing, marry him severely. 
With what alacrity he carries the notification of Miss Eudd's 
wishes to Printing- House Square ! How devoutly he hopes 
that the advertisement will be speedily answered ! 

Not only to Sir Dian Lunes, but to Thomas Tallboys, 
Esq. (known, when in the House, from his taciturnity, as 
" Mum " Tallboys), Miss Eudd would be an eligible retainer. 
That stiff, stern, melancholy, silent, man would find a treasure 
in her. Trestles, the footman, who is more than half-brother 
to a mute, would have a grim and silent respect for her. Her 
lank canoe-like shoes would go noiselessly about the stairs ; 
into Mr. Tallboys's ghastly dining-room, where there is a 
Turkey carpet, of which the faded colours seem to have sunk 
through the floor, like spectres ; into the study, where there 
are great bookcases of vellum bound volumes, which seem to 
have turned pale with fright at the loneliness of their habita- 
tion, a view of the Street of Tombs at Pompeii, and a model 
of an ancient sarcophagus — the study where every morning 
she would find Mr. Tallboys in a dressing-gown, like a tartan 
winding sheet, with a bony paperknife cutting the leaves of the 
Eegistrar-General's returns, which he will have sent to him 



7 2 Dutch Pictures. 

weekly; into the silent kitchen, where an imposing and 
gleaming batterie de cuisine (never used but twice a year) blinks 
lazily at the preparations for his daily chop; into the mournful 
housekeeper's room, garnished with unused sweets and 
condiments ; into the strange crypts and vaults of the silent 
cellar, would Miss Eudd roam noiselessly, gloomily. Mr. 
Tallboys will, after she has served him for a year, have the 
highest respect for her. " She is a person," he will write to 
his friend Colonel Vertebra, judge advocate of the colony of 
Kensalgrenia, " of singular discretion and reticence." When 
he dies, he will leave her a considerable sum in those mortuary 
securities, South Sea annuities. Then, perhaps, she will 
espouse the grim Mr. Trestles, and conduct a dreary lodging- 
house in some dreary street adjoining an obsolete square ; or, 
adhering to celibacy, retire to a neat sarcophagus cottage in 
the Mile-End Road, or the vicinity of Dalston. 

It is a mistake to suppose that a single gentleman's 
housekeeper proceeds uniformly to her end — which is 
naturally connected with the probate duty — by means of 
coaxing, complaisance, and general sycophancy. Such means 
may be employed in certain cases, where the patient — like a 
man who has been addicted to opium-eating — cannot be kept 
up to the mark without doses of his habitual medicine, flattery. 
But, in nine cases out of ten, the successful treatment is 
composed of tyranny and intimidation. A proper impression 
once implanted in the mind of the single gentleman that his 
housekeeper is indispensable to his health and comfort, and 
she is safe. Her knees need be no longer hinged, her neck 
corrigible, her tongue oiled. The little finger of the domestic 
becomes a rod of iron, with which the celibatarian may be 



Want Places, 73 

scourged, or round which he may be twisted at will. How 
many fierce major-generals there are, once the martinets of 
garrisons, who are now the submissive Helots of cross old 
women who cannot spell ! How many Uncle Joins crouch 
beneath the lash of a female Legree, whom they feed and 
pay wages to ! This is human nature. We know that 
we can turn Legree out of doors, and break her cowskin 
over her back, to-morrow ; but we don't do anything of th 
sort. 

There are many other housekeepers who want places just 
now. There is Mrs. Muggeridge, who is not too proud to 
seek a domestic appointment, in which the high art of the 
housekeeper is joined to the more homely avocations of the 
cook. As cook and housekeeper, Mrs. Muggeridge will suit 
genteel families in Bloomsbury and Russell Squares, Gowef 
Street, Mornington Crescent, or Cadogan Place. She would 
be just the person for the upper end of Sloane Street. She 
has a neat hand in cutting vegetable bouquets for garnishing, 
out of carrots, turnips, and parsnips ; also for the decorated 
frills of paper round the shankbones of legs of mutton and 
the tops of candlesticks. She can make gooseberry fools, 
custards, and jellies ; but, if trifles or Chantilly baskets are 
in question, they must be procured from the pastrycook ; fo^ 
Mrs. Muggeridge is genteel, but not fashionable. She is a 
stout, buxom woman, very clean and neat ; and, to see hei 
going round to her various tradespeople in the morning with 
her capacious basket and store of red account books, is a verj 
cheerful and edifying spectacle. Mrs. Muggeridge has a 
husband — a meek man with a grey head and a limp white 
neckcloth — who is head waiter at a large hotel; but he 



74 Dutch Pictures. 

is seldom seen at home, and is not of much account there 
wheu he is. 

Then there is Mrs. Compott, who is desirous of obtaining 
a situation as housekeeper in a school or public establishment, 
and who would not object to look after the linen department, 
Mrs. Compott is a very hard, angular, inflexible woman, with 
a decidedly strong mind. She is not exactly unfeeling, but 
her sensibilities are blunted — not to say deadened — by the 
wear and tear of many boys ; and such a tough integument 
has been formed over her finer feelings as might be sup- 
posed to be possessed by a Scotch assistant surgeon in the 
navy after a sharp sequence of cock-pit practice. At Mr. 
Gripforth's academy for young gentlemen, Hammersmith, she 
would be an invaluable scholastic housekeeper and matron. 
The little maladies to which shool-boys are liable ; — such as 
chicken-pox, hooping-cough, chilblains, ringworm, boils, 
chapped hands and cuts — all of which ailments she classes 
under the generic term of " rubbage " — she treats with 
sudden remedies, generally efficacious, but occasionally ob- 
jected to by the patient. Mr. Katarr, the visiting apothecary 
— a fawn-coloured young man in a shiny macintosh, very 
harmless, and reputed to sustain nature by the consumption 
of his own stock of cough lozenges, humected with rose 
water — has a high opinion of Mrs. Compott. " I will send 
Tumfey," he says to the principal, " another bottle of the 
mixture ; and that, with Mrs. Compott's good care, will soon 
bring him round." Have you never known a Mrs. Compott ? 
In your young days, at Mr. Gripforth's academy, at Miss 
Whalebone's preparatory establishment, or Doctor Eubasore's 
collegiate school ; where it was so essential that the pupils 



Want Places. 75 

should be sons of gentlemen, and where you had that great 
fight with Andy Spring the pork-butcher's son ? Can't you 
remember your sycophancy to that majestic domestic for jam 
and late bread and butter ? You could not crawl lower, now, 
for a Garter or a tide-waiter's place. Don't you yet feel a sort 
of shudder at the remembrance of Mrs. Compott's Saturday 
night's gymnastics with the towel, the yellow soap, the hard 
water, and — horror of horrors — the small tooth comb ? 

Mrs. Compott is always a widow. Mr. Compott was 
" unfortunate," and had "a house of his own once;" but 
what his misfortunes or his house were is as mysterious as a 
cuneiform inscription. Mrs. Compott very often contracts a 
second marriage, and becomes Mrs. Gripforth or Mrs. Ruba- 
sore. But for such an alliance it would be inexplicable to me 
what that rugged, inflexible, terrible personage the school- 
master's wife could originally have been ; or how indeed school- 
masters themselves find time and opportunity to court wives. 
I never knew a young lady who kept company with a school- 
master, nor was I ever at a scholastic wedding. Others may 
have been more fortunate. 

The schoolmaster's housekeeper would not mind under- 
taking the superintendence of a public establishment, which 
may mean Somerset House, an union workhouse, a female 
penitentiary, or a set of chambers in the Adelphi. But she 
is not to that manor born : the orthodox public housekeeper 
is a widely different functionary. Such public establishments 
as chambers, public offices, warehouses, &c, are peculiarly 
adapted to Mrs. Tapps, married, but without incumbrance; 
entertaining, indeed, a small niece, but who is so far from 
being an incumbrance that she does, ou more or less com- 



76 Dutch Pictures. 

pulsion, as much work as a grown-up housemaid. Mrs. 
Tapps is a cloudy female, with a great deal of apron, living 
chiefly underground, and never without a bonnet. What her 
literary attainments (if any) may be I am unable to say ; but 
for all catechetical purposes she is profoundly ignorant. She 
knows positively nothing upon any subject holding with the 
external world ; less (if that were possible) about any of the 
lodgers or occupants of the house she dwells in. " She can't 
say : " — " she don't know, she's sure : " — " she's not 
c aweer,' " and so on to the end of the chapter. " She'll ask 
the landlord." The landlord is her Alpha and her Omega. 
The landlord is the Grand Thibetian Llama of her creed — 
as mysterious and as invisible — the Caesar to whom all 
appeals must be made. The landlord is all Mrs. Tapps 
knows or seems to know anything of. Her niece Euphemia 
is also naturally reserved ; of a timidity moving her to violent 
trembling and weeping when addressed, and afflicted more- 
over with an impediment iu her speech. All you ordinarily 
see of her is a foreshortened presentment as she is scrubbing 
the doorsteps or the stairs — all you hear of her are the slipshod 
scuffling of her shoes about the house, and her stifled moans 
in the kitchen when being beaten by her aunt for black- 
leading her face instead of the stove. Mr. Tapps is a 
postman, or an employe in the docks, or a railway porter, 
or engaged in some avocation which necessitates his coming 
home every night very dirty and tired. He smokes a strong 
pipe and studies yesterday's newspaper till he goes to 
bed; but however Mrs. Tapps, and her neice, and the 
gaunt grey cat, and the long lean candle with the cauli- 
flower wick, pass their time during the long winter evenings 



Want Places. 77 

in the silent kitchen in the empty house is beyond my com- 
prehension. 

There is another public establishment which boasts a 
housekeeper — I mean a theatre. Spruce visitors to the boxes, 
jovial frequenters of the pit, noisy denizens of the gallery, 
little deem of, if they did they would care as little about the 
existence of a dingy female, " Mrs. Smallgrove, the house- 
keeper," a personage well known to the stage-doorkeeper 
and the manager, and the chief of that sallow, decayed, 
mysterious band of women called " cleaners," who poke 
about the private boxes and pit benches with stunted brooms 
and guttering candles during rehearsals, and who are dimly 
visible in dressing-rooms and dark passages. The people 
behind the scenes, actors, musicians, workmen, are conscious 
of the existence of these functionaries, but scarcely more. 
They are aware of Mrs. Smallgrove, but they do not know her. 
It is a question even if they are familiar with her name. She 
superintends the lowering of the grim brown Holland cloths 
over the gay decorations after the performances. Where she 
lives is a mysteiy — somewhere underneath the "gravetrap" in 
the mezzanine floor, or high in the tackled flies, perhaps. No 
man regardeth her ; but, when the last actor is descending 
from hi s dressing-room at night, when the last carpenter has 
packed up his tools to go home, the figure of the theatrical 
housekeeper is descried duskily looming in the distance — ■ 
covering up the pianoforte in the green room, or conferring 
with the fireman amidst the coils of the engine hose, or upon 
the deserted stage, which, an hour ago, was joyous with light 
and life and music. When the Theatre Royal, Hatton Garden, 
has a vacancy for a housekeeper it is through some occult 



78 Dutch Pictures. 

influence — some application totally independent of the three- 
and-sixpenny publicity — that Mrs. Smallgrove is inducted 
into this situation. She may have been a decayed keeper of a 
wardrobe, a prompter's wife fallen upon evil days, a decrepit 
ballet mistress. But what her antecedents have been is 
doubtful, likewise the amount of her salary. 

A S NURSE in a Nobleman's or Gentleman's Family, a Person of 
-^•*- great experience in the care of Children. Can be highly recommended 
by several families of distinction. Address P., care of Mr. Walkinshaw, 
Trotman's Buildings, Legg Street Road, S. 

As nurse ! For what enormous funds we can draw on the 
bank of Memory on the mention of that familiar word ! With 
the Nurse are connected our youthful hopes and fears — our 
earliest joys, our earliest sorrows. She was the autocrat of our 
nonage. Her empire over us commenced even before memory 
began. When Frederick the Great tempted the soldier on 
guard to smoke a pipe, adding that he was the king, what 
was the reply of the faithful sentinel? "King," he said, "be 
hanged, what will my captain say?" So, when even the 
parental authority winked at our infantile shortcomings, the 
dread thought, " What will nurse say ? " shot through our 
youthful minds ; and the parental wink, although it might 
be urged in alleviation, could not purchase impunity. 

Charles Lamb, in one of his delightful Essays, says, that 
if he were not an independent gentleman he would like to 
be a beggar. Alexander of Macedon expressed a somewhat 
analogical wish in reference to Diogenes in his tub. Thus, 
to come farther down, and nearer home, I may say that next 
to being the Marchioness of Candyshire, I should like to be 
the Marchioness of Candyshire's nurse. I will not enlarge 



Want Places. 79 

on the gorgeous estate of the monthly nurse in an aristo- 
cratic family, on her unquestioned despotism, her unresisted 
caprices, her irreversible decrees, her undisputed sway over 
Baby, her familiarity with the most eminent of the Faculty, 
and the auriferous oblations offered to her in the shape of 
guineas in the christening cup, because the lady of Trotman's 
Buildings is the nurse I propose to sketch, not a lunar but a 
permanent nurse, one of the arbiters of the child's career, 
from its emancipation from the cradle to its entrance into the 
school -room. 

And surely, when we hear so much of what school- 
masters and mistresses have done towards forming children's 
minds ; when old Fuller bids us remember " R. Bond, of 
Lancashire," for that he had the " breeding the learned 
Ascham," and " Hartgrave in Brundly school, because he 
was the first did teach worthy Dr. Whitaker," and " Mul- 
grave for his scholar, that gulf of learning, Bishop Andrews;" 
when we are told what influence this first schoolmistress had 
towards making Hannah More a moralist, or that poor dear 
governess L. E. L. a poetess, should we not call to mind what 
mighty influences the nurse must have had in kneading the 
capacities, and after-likings and after-learnings of the most 
famous men and women ? What heroes and statesmen must 
have learnt their first lessons of fortitude and prudence on 
the nurse's knee — what hornbooks of duty and truth and 
love and piety must have been first conned under that homely 
instructress? On the other hand, what grievous seeds 
of craven fear, and dastardly rebellion, and hypocrisy and 
hate, and stubborn pride must have been sown in the child's 
first nursery garden by the nurse ? Shakspeare, who never 



8o Dutch Pictures. 

overlooked anything, was mindful of the nurse's mission : you 
may turn up in his works a score of quotations on the nursery 
head without trouble ; and (most ludicrous descent of analogy) 
even that American showman had some shrewd knowledge of 
the chords that are respondent in the human heart, when he 
foisted an old black woman on his countrymen as Wash- 
ington's nurse. 

Mrs. Pettifer, now desirous of an engagement in a family 
of distinction, must have been originally, I take it, a nursery- 
maid ; but if ever lowliness were her " young ambition's 
ladder," she now decidedly — 

" — looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees 
By which she did ascend." 

Between her and nursery-maids there is a yawning gulf as 
impassable as Niagara in a cock-boat. " Bits of girls," 
"trumpery things," thus she characterises them. She over- 
flows with the failing by which angels are said to have fallen 
— pride. There is no humility, real or simulated, about her. 
She knows her place thoroughly ; but she knows that place 
is to command, to reprimand, to overawe high and low, from 
the Marchioness of Candyshire to Prue the smallest maid, 
who is the slave of her gunpowder tea-pot and a bond ser- 
vant to her arrowroot skillet. 

At the Marchioness of Candyshire's (where we will sup- 
pose her, for the nonce, to be installed), at that imposing 
town house in Great Gruffin Street, Brobdignag Square, 
about which Messrs. Gunter's myrmidons are always hanging 
with green boxes ; where the clustered soot from bye-gone 
flambeaux in the iron extinguishers on the area railings is 



Want Places. 81 

eloquent of entertainments past ; and where the harlequinaded 
hatchment of Goliath the last Marquis (a sad man for 
chicken-hazard) hints what a great family the Candy- 
shires are. Here, in this most noble mansion, from the 
nursery w r icket to the weathercocks over the chimney 
cowls, Martha Pettifer is Empress and Queen. The lower 
•suites of apartments she condescendingly concedes to the 
Marquis and Marchioness for balls, dinners, and similar 
trifles ; but hers are the flight of nursery stairs, both back 
and front ; hers the airy suite of upper rooms ; hers the 
cribs, cradles, and tender bodies of the hopes and pride of 
Candyshire. 

The youthful Earl of Everton, aged four, Lord Claude 
Tofhe, aged three, Ladies Dulciana and Juliana Toffie, aged 
two years and eight months, respectively, are her serfs, vas- 
sals, and villains. Over them she has all rights of soccage, 
jambage, free warren, turbary, pit and gallows (or rather 
corner and cupboard), and all other feudal and manorial 
rights. Lord Candyshire, a timid marquis with a red head, 
manifestly afraid of his own footman — who was expected to 
do something great in the House on the Bosjesman Bishop- 
rics (additional) Bill, but did not — is admitted to the nursery 
on sufferance ; and gives there his caresses with perturba- 
tion, and his opinions with deference. Lady Candyshire — a 
superb member of the female aristocracy (you remember her 
portrait by Flummery, E.A., as Semiramis), and whom her 
cousin and former suitor Lord Tommy Fetlock frequently 
offers to back in the smoking-room of his club as " game " 
to " shut up " any number of ladies-in-waiting in a snail's 
canter — is subdued and complaisant in the nursery. She 

G 



82 Dutch Pictures. 

has an uneasy consciousness that she is not quite mistress there; 
and though Mrs. Pettifer is not at all like Semiramis, and no 
Flummery, R.A., ever dreamt of taking her portrait, the 
Marchioness defers to her, and bears with her humours, and 
bends to her will. As for the Caudyshire carnage, sleek horses, 
tigerskin hammercloth, coachman's wig, footman's batons, and 
herald painting, they are quite as much Mrs. Pettifer's as 
her ladyship's. If the youthful scions of that illustrious 
house are to take, according to her sovereign will, an airing 
in the Park, and the Marchioness is desirous of attending a 
meeting of the ladies' committee of the Penitent-Cannibals 
Society, she may take the brougham ; Martha Pettifer must 
have the great body vehicle. If, on the other hand, a visit 
is to be made to Mr. Manismooth, the dentist's, Martha 
boldly usurps the close carriage, and, bleak as may be the 
day, and lowering the clouds, leaves her mistress to shift for 
herself— even when Lord Candyshire (whose silent services 
at the House of Lords involve the carrying about of a huge 
mass of papers) has bespoken the curly-wigged coachman 
and the horses for the conveyance of himself and blue-books 
to Westminster. As to poor Mademoiselle Frileuse, the thin 
Swiss governess, with her charge, Lady Ariadne Toffie, aged 
eleven, sbe may take what vehicle she can procure. 

Martha Pettifer, notwithstanding her high estate of car- 
riage, and curly-wigged coachman and batoned footman, 
does not ape the apparel of an aristocrat. There is no mis- 
taking her for a marchioness ; she is above that. She towers 
high among the youthful Candyshires, erect and stately, com- 
fortably clad in woollen and stout silk. At shops and exhi- 
bitions, at the gate of that favourite resort of the juvenile 



Want Places. 83 

aristocracy, the Zoological Gardens in the Regent's Park, 
you may see the great Candyshire carriage standing; or you 
may watch it rolling leisurely through Hyde Park, the Can- 
dyshire children looking as beautiful and as delicate as only 
British children can look. Aristocratic mammas pass by in 
their carriages and remark, with languid complacency, how 
well the dear children look, and what a treasure Lady Candy- 
shire must have in her nurse. 

Which is best, think you, Mademoiselle Frileuse, to be — 
after a tedious intellectual training which may fit you to 
become a duchess, inasmuch as you are expected to impart 
it to a young lady who may be a duchess some day — a 
governess, with forty pounds a year " salary," or to be Mrs. 
Pettifer, a nurse, with fifty pounds a year " wages " ? Have 
you a tithe as much authority over your pupil as she has 
over her nurslings? Can you command the footmen, and 
make the nursemaids tremble ? Does the Marchioness defer 
to you, and say, " Mademoiselle, I dare say you know best, 
therefore do as you like." Can you contradict the doctor, 
the mighty Sir Paracelsus Powgrave, and make poor little 
Mr. Pildrag, the apothecary, shiver in his cloth boots when 
he comes to lance the children's gums ? Are all your lingual 
skill, your drawing, your painting, your harp and pianoforte 
cunning, your geography, your use of the globes, and your 
rudiments of Latin, held as of half so much account as Mrs. 
Pettifer' s experiences in the administration of a foot-bath, in 
the virtues of lambs' w r ool socks, in the efficacy of a Dover's 
powder ? You are to teach the children the learning which 
is to fortify their minds, the graces which are to adorn their 
persons for the tournament of the world ; but yonder illiterate 

g 2 



84 Dutch PiBures. 

woman who gives the children their physic, superintends 
their washing and dressing, and cuts their bread and butter, 
thinks and knows herself to be infinitely superior to you : " a 
bit of a governess, indeed ! " 

There are nurses in all grades and conditions of life who 
want places just now, but they all, on a correspondingly 
descending scale, are fashioned after the Pettifer model. 
Some are temporary and some permanent; some ready to 
take the child from the month, some preferring the care of 
children of more advanced growth. Then there is the transi- 
tion nurse — half nurse, half nursemaid, and not averse to sub- 
siding into the anomalous position of a " young-ladies' maid." 
There are nurses of tender hearts apt to conceive an affection 
for their charges quite as ardent as that which a mother ever 
had for her own children ; who grieve as passionately when 
they are separated from them as those good Normandy 
women do who take the babes from the Foundling Hospital 
in Paris. Such nurses will, after lapses of long years, and 
from immense distances, suddenly start up looking as young, 
or rather as old as ever, and shed tears of delight at the sight 
and speech of their nurse-childrenjgrown men and women, now, 
with children of their own to nurse. Woe is me that there 
should be found, among this apparently simple-minded and. 
affectionate class, persons who make of their once state of 
nursehood a kind of prescriptive ground for future claims. 
" Nurses ! " says my friend Brown, with a groan, " I've had 
enough of 'em. My mother had thirteen children, and I 
have had seven of my own ; and every now and then I am 
beset with importunate old women curtseying, hang 'em, and 
saying, * Please, sir, I nursed you, 5 or, ' Please, sir, I was 



Want Places, 85 

master Tommy's nurse;' and who expect five shillings and a 
pound of green tea." 

Then there is Mrs. Crapper, whom I may characterise as 
the " back streets nurse, 3 ' who is strictly temporary, and 
whose connection lies chiefly among small tradesmen and 
well-to-do mechanics. She dwells somewhere in Drury 
Court, or Carnaby Street, Golden Square, or Denmark 
Street, Soho, in a many-belled house, over a chandler's 
shop, or a bookstall, perhaps. The intuitive prescience of 
being wanted possessed by this woman is to me astonishing. 
She never requires to be " fetched " like the doctor — appa- 
rently so, at least. She seems to come up some domestic 
trap. There she is at her post, with a wonderful free- 
masonic understanding with the doctor, and the Registrar 
of Births, and the undertaker, and the sexton, and all the 
misty functionaries, whisperingly talked of but seldom seen, 
connected with our coming in and going out of the world. 
Eor Mrs. Crapper is as often an attendant upon the sunset as 
upon the sunrise of life. 

There is also the Indian Nurse, the Ayah, a brown female 
in crumpled white muslin, who comes over, with her nurse 
child, or baba, with Mrs. Captain Chutney in the Putty ghaut 
East Indiaman, or with the widow of Mr. Mofuzzle of the 
civil service overland. Her performances in England are 
chiefly confined to sitting upon the stairs, shivering and chat- 
tering her teeth, pitiably, and uttering heart-rending entreaties 
to be sent back to Bengal. Back to Bengal she is sent in due 
time, accordingly, to squat in a verandah, and talk to her 
baba in an unintelligible gabble of Hindostanee and English, 
after the manner of Ayahs generally. 



86 Dutch Pictures. 

There is a lady of the nurse persuasion who does not want 
a place in the Times, but who is not above wanting nurse 
children. The custom of putting children out to nurse is 
decidedly prevalent. The present writer was "raised " in this 
manner. I have no coherent remembrance of the lady, but I 
bear yet about me an extensive scar caused by a humorous 
freak of hers to tear off a blister before the proper time. She 
also, I understand, was in the habit of beating me into a very 
prismatic condition, though, to do her justice, she distributed 
her blows among her nurse children and her own with unflinch- 
ing impartiality. The termination of my connection with her 
was caused by her putting me into a bed with two of her young 
charges who were ill of the measles ; following out a theory 
she entertained, that it was as well that I should catch that 
complaint then as in after days ; on which occasion I was 
rescued from her and conveyed home, wrapped up in blankets. 
I have also an indistinct remembrance of having been, in some 
stage of my petticoathood, introduced to a young gentleman 
in a trencher cap and leather breeches, on the ground that be 
had been my foster-brother. Carrying memory farther back, 
and remembering sundry cuffs and kicks, and mutual out- 
tearings of handfuls of hair, I had some faint idea that I 
really had been acquainted with the young gentleman at some 
time or other. 

The person who takes children out to nurse resides at 
Brentford, or at Lewisham, or Sydenham. Her husband may 
be a labourer in a market-garden, or a suburban omnibus 
driver, or a river bargeman. She may be (as she often is) a 
comely, kindly, motherly woman, delighting to make her 
little knot of infants a perfect nosegay of health, and beauty, 



Want Places, 87 

and cleanliness ; or she may be (as she very often is, too) an 
ignorant, brutish, drunken jade ; beating, starving, and 
neglecting her helpless wards, laying in them the foundation 
of such mortal maladies, both physical and moral, as years of 
afternurture shall not assuage. And yet we take our nurses, 
or send our babies to nurse, blindfold, although we would not 
go out partridge shooting with a gun we had bought of Cheap 
Jack, or adventure our merchandise in a ship of which we 
knew not the name, the tonnage, or the register. 

One more nurse closes my list — the hospital nurse. Mrs. 
Pettifer's high-blown pride may have, from over distension, at 
length broken, and the many summers she has floated " in a 
sea of glory," may, and do, find a termination sometimes in 
the cold, dull, dark pool of an hospital ward. Yet power has 
not wholly passed away from her; for, beyond the doctors, to 
whom she must perforce be polite and submissive, and the 
students, whom she treats with waggish complacency, 
she is supreme over all with whom she comes in con- 
tact. Mrs. Pettifer, formerly feared and obeyed by the 
Candyshire vassalage, is here Nurse Canterbury or Nurse 
Adelaide, still feared, still obeyed in Canterbury or Adelaide 
Ward. Controller of physic, of sweet or bitter sauce for food ; 
smoother of pillows, speaker of soft or querulous words, dis- 
penser of gall or balsam to the sick, she is conciliated by rela- 
tives, dreaded or loved by patients. I often think, when I 
walk through the long, clean, silent wards of an hospital 
(nothing, save the lower decks of a man-of-war, can come up 
to hospital order, neatness, and cleanliness) watehing the 
patients quietly resigned, yet so expressively suffering, the 
golden sunlight playing on their wan faces, the slow crawling 



88 Dutch Pictures. 

steps of the convalescents, the intermittent cases sitting?; 
quietly at their beds' foot, waiting patiently till their time of 
torture shall come; — hearing the monotonous ticking of the 
clock, the slow rustling of the bed-clothes, the pattering foot 
of the nurse as she moves from bed to bed, consulting the 
paper at the bed-head as to the medicine and diet, and slowly 
gurgling forth the draught : I often think of what an immense, 
an awful weight of responsibility hangs in this melancholy 
abode upon the Nurse. The doctor has his vocation, and per- 
forms it. He severs this diseased limb, and binds up that 
wound. The physician points out the path to health, and 
gives us drugs like money to help us on our way. But it is- 
for the nurse to guide the weary wanderer ; to wipe the dust 
from his bleared eyes and the cold sweat from his brow; to 
moisten his parched lips ; to bathe his swollen feet : to soothe 
and tend and minister to him until the incubus of sickness be 
taken off and he struggle into life a whole man again. 

Sometimes the hospital nurse is not an aristocrat in deca- 
dence, but a plebian promoted. Often the back streets nurse, 
at the recommendation of the doctor, changes the venue of 
her ministrations from Carnaby Street to Saint Gengulphus's 
or Saint Prude's. The hospital nurse is ordinarily hard-work- 
ing, skilful, placable, and scrupulously cleanly ; but she has, 
too frequently, two deadly sins. She drinks, and she is 
accessible to bribery ; and, where bribery begins, extortion, 
partiality, and tyranny, to those who cannot bribe, soon fol- 
low. I wish I could acquit the hospital nurse of these weak- 
nesses, but I cannot.* And this is why I hail as excellent 

* This paper was first published in 1853 ; since that time many bene- 
ficial changes have been made in the system and practice of hospital 
nursing. 



Want Places. 89 

and hopeful the recent introduction into some hospitals of 
superintendent nurses, called Sisters, superior in intelligence 
and education to the average class of attendants. 

As nursery-maid ; as nurse-girl ; as wet-nurse (" with a 
good," &c, a lady generally sensitive as to diet, and whose 
daily pints of porter are with her points of honour) ; as school- 
room-maid : all these " want places " speak for themselves. 
They are buds and offshoots and twigs of the nurse-tree pro- 
per, and as such are highly useful, each in their distinctive 
sphere, but beyond that they do not call for any detailed 
notice here. 




VII. 



MORE PLACES WANTED. 



A S LADY'S-MAID, a young person who has lived in the first 
-^- families, and can have four years's good character. Fully under- 
stands dressmaking, hair-dressing, and getting up fine linen. Address 
Miss T., Bunty's Library, Crest Terrace, Pimlico. 

Miss Fanny Tarlatan, the young lady in quest of a situa- 
tion, does not reside at Bunty's library. Mr. Bunty and Mr. 
Bunty's wife are only friends of hers. Mr. Bunty is tall 
and stout, with a white neckcloth, and is very like a clergy- 
man, with a dash of the schoolmaster and a smack of the 
butler. Mrs. Butity is an acrid lady in ribbons, with a 
perpetual smile for lady customers ; which would be a little 
more agreeable if it did not twist her neck, and screw her 
mouth up, and twist her body over the counter. At 
Bunty's library are three-volume novels bound in dashing 
cloth; and Bunty's library is carpeted; and in the centre 
thereof is a great round table groaning beneath the weight of 
ladies' albums, and works of genteel piety, and treatises 
written with a view to induce a state of contentment among 
the rural population (hot-pressed and with gilt edges), 



More Places Wanted. 91 

together with neatly stitched pamphlets upon genteelly 
religious and political subjects, and handsomely elapsed 
church services, with great red crosses on their backs and 
sides. 

No ; Miss Tarlatan does not live at Bunty's ; but she is 
an old colleague of Mrs. Bunty's (once Miss Thorneytwig, 
my Lady Crocus's waiting woman), and calls her Matilda, 
and is by her called "Fanny," and "Dear Girl;" and 
therefore she gives Bunty's library as an address ; it being 
considered more aristocratic than Tidlers' Gardens ; where, in 
the house of Mrs. Silkey, that respectable milliner and dress- 
maker, Miss Tarlatan is at present staying. 

She can dress hair, make dresses, and perfectly under- 
stands getting up fine linen. The French coiffeur is still a 
great personage ; but his services are now-a-days often sup- 
plied by the lady's-maid ; and there are many fair and noble 
ladies who are not too haughty to employ Miss Tarlatan, and 
go, resplendent from her skill, into the presence of their 
sovereign, or into the melodious vicinity of the singers of the 
Italian opera. Also to wear ball and court dresses made, 
not by the pallid workwomen and " first hands " of the great 
milKnery establishments of the West-End, but by the nimble 
fingers of Fanny Tarlatan. Also to confide to her sundry 
priceless treasures of Mechlin and Brussels, Honiton and old 
point, or "Beggar's lace," sprigged shawls and veils, and 
such marvels of fine things, to be by her got up. All of 
which proceedings are characterised by the great millinery 
establishments, by the fashionable blanchisseus de Jin, and by 
M. Anatole, coiffeur, of Eegent Street, as atrocious, mean, 
stingy, avaricious, and unjustifiable on the part of miladi ; 



92 Dutch Pi&ures. 

but which, if they suit her to order and Miss Tarlatan to 
undertake, are in my mind, on the broad-gauge of free trade, 
perfectly reasonable and justifiable. Some ladies make a 
merit of their Tarlatanism, stating, with pride, that their 
maids " do everything for them; " others endeavour uneasily 
to defend their economy by reference to the hardness of the 
times, to their large families, to the failure of revenue from 
my lord's Irish estates, to the extravagance of such and such 
a son or heir, or to Sir John having lost enormously in rail- 
ways or by electioneering. One lady I have heard of who 
palliated all domestic retrenchments on the ground of having 
to pay so much income-tax. Unhappy woman ! 

Hairdresser, dressmaker, getter-up of fine linen ; skilled 
in cosmetics and perfumes ; tasteful arranger of bouquets ; 
dexterous cleaner of gloves (for my lady must have two pairs 
of clean gloves a-day and, bountiful as may be her pin-money, 
you will rarely find her spending seven-hundred and thirty 
times four shillings per annum in gloves) ; artful trimmer of 
bonnets ; clever linguist ; of great conversational powers in 
her own language ; of untiring industry, cheerfulness, and 
good temper — all these is Fanny Tarlatan, aged twenty- 
eight. I have a great respect for Fanny Tarlatan, and for 
the lady's-maid, generally, and wish to vindicate her from 
the slur of being a gossiping, tawdry, intriguing, venal 
waiting-maid, as which she is generally represented in novels 
and plays, and similar performances. 

Fanny is not without personal charms. She has ringlets 
that her lady might envy, and the comely good-humoured 
look which eight-and-twenty is often gilded with. She has 
been resolute enough to steel her heart against the advances 



More Places Wanted, 93 

'of many a dashing courier, of many an accomplished valet, of 
many a staid and portly butler. She does not look for 
matrimony in the World of Service. Mr. Whatnext, at the 
Great Haberdashery Palace, Froppery House, head man 
there, indeed (though Mr. Biggs, my lord's gentleman, has 
sneeringly alluded to him as a "low counter-jumper"), has 
spoken her fair. Jellytin, the rising pastrycook at Gunter's, 
has openly avowed his maddening passion, and showed her 
his savings'-bank book. But that did not dazzle her ; for 
she too has a "little bit of money of her own." Her reve- 
nues chiefly lie, not in~her wages — they are not too ample — 
but in her perquisites. Lawyers would staiwe (figuratively, 
of course, for 'tis impossible for a lawyer to starve under any 
circumstances) on the bare six and eightpences — it is the 
extra costs that fatten. Perquisites are Fanny Tarlatan's 
costs. To her fall all my lady's cast-off clothes. Their 
amount and value depend upon my lady's constitutional 
liberality or parsimony. A dress may be worn once, a week, 
a month, or a year before it reverts to the lady's-maid. So 
with gloves, shoes, ribbons, and all the other weapons in the 
female armoury, of which I know no more than St. Anthony 
did of the sex — or that Levantine monk Mr. Curzon made us 
acquainted with, who had never seen a woman. Old Lady 
McAthelyre, with whom Fanny lived before she went to the 
Countess of Cceurdesart's (Lady McA. was a terrible old 
lady, not unsuspected of a penchant for shoplifting and 
drinking eau de cologne grog), used to cut up all her old 
dresses for aprons, and the fingers off her gloves for mittens, 
and was the sort of old lady altogether who might reasonably 
be expected to skin a flea for the hide and tallow thereof. 



94 Dutch PiStures. 

Mrs. Colonel Scraw, Fanny's mistress after Lady Coeurde- 
sart, made her old clothes her own peculiar perquisites, and 
sold them herself. But such exceptions are rare, and Fanny 
has had, on the whole, no great reason to complain. Perhaps 
you will, therefore, at some future time, meet with her under 
the name of Whatnext, or Jellytin, or Figgles, or Seakale, in 
a snug, well-to-do West-End business, grown into a portly 
matron (with ringlets yet; for they are vital to the lady's- 
maid through life), with two little girls tripping home from 
Miss Weazel's dancing academy. I hope so, with all my heart. 
There is a custom common among the English nobility, 
and yet peculiar to that privileged class, to get the best of 
everything. Consequently, whenever they find foreign cooks 
and foreign musicians more skilful than native talent, it is 
matter of noble usance to refect upon foreign dishes; to 
prefer the performances of foreign minstrels and players ; to 
cover the head, or hands, or feet, with coverings made by 
foreign artisans; and, even in the ordinary conversation 
of life, to pepper discourse with foreign words, as you would 
a sheep's kidney with cayenne. So my lord duke entertains 
in his great mansion a French cook, a Swiss confectioner, an 
Italian house steward, a French valet, German and French 
governesses, a German under-nurse or bonne (that his children 
may imbibe fragments of foreign language with their pap), 
besides a host of non-resident foreign artists and professors 
gathered from almost every nation under the sun. It is, 
therefore, but reasonable that her grace the duchess should 
have a foreign attendant — a French, or Swiss, or German 
lady's-maid. I will take Mademoiselle Batiste, warranted 
from Paris, as a sample. 



More Places Wanted. 95 

When I say warranted from Paris, I mean what the word 
" warranted " is generally found to mean — not at all like 
what it professes to be. Mademoiselle Batiste says she is 
from Paris ; but she does not bear the slightest resemblance 
to the pert, sprightly, coquettish, tasteful, merry creation in 
a cunning cap, a dress closed to the neck, a plaited siik 
apron and shiny shoes, that a Parisian lady's maid generally 
is. My private impression is that she is a native of some 
distressingly lugubrious provincial town in the midi of Prance 
— Aigues-Mortes, perchance — whence she has been sent, for 
our sins, to England, to make us mournful. She is a most 
dolorous Abigail ; a lachrymose, grumbling, doleant, miser- 
able waiting woman. When she is old (she is in the 
thirties, now,) she will take snuff and keep a poodle on 
some fifth floor in the Marais. Whether she has been dis- 
appointed in love, or her relations were guillotined during 
the great revolution; whether she was born on the eve of 
St. S within, or like Apollodorus, nourishes scorpions in her 
breast, I know not, but she is a very grievous woman — a 
female knight of the rueful countenance. If you fail to 
please her she grumbles ; if you remonstrate with her, she 
cries. What are you to do with a woman, whose clouds 
always end in rain, unless you have Patience for an umbrella? 
In person, Mademoiselle Batiste is tall ; in compass wofully 
lean and attenuated ; her face is of the hatchet cast, and she 
has protruding teeth, long dark eyebrows, stony eyes, and 
heavy eye-lashes. A sick monkey is not a very enlivening 
sight ; a black man with chilblains and a fit of the ague is 
not calculated to provoke cheerfulness, and there are specta- 
cles more cheerful than a workhouse funeral on a wet day; 



96 Dutch PiBures^ 

but all these are positively carnivals of joviality compared 
to Mademoiselle Batiste wailing over her lady's wardrobe, 
her own wrongs, and her unhappy destiny generally. The 
climate, the food, the lodging, the raiment, the tyranny of 
superiors, and the insolence of inferiors ; all these find a 
place in the category of this gruesome lady's unhappiness. 
She prophecies the decadence of England with far more 
fervour than M. Ledru Rollin. She will impress herself to 
leave this detestable land; without sun, without manners, 
without knowledge of living. Somehow she does not quit 
this detestable land. She is like (without disrespect) that 
animal of delusive promise, the conjuror's donkey, which 
is always going for to go, but seldom does really go, up the 
ladder. Mademoiselle Batiste weeps and moans, and 
grumbles, and changes her situation innumerable times, and 
packs up her " effects " for the continent once a week or so ; 
but stays in England after all. When she has saved enough 
money, she may perhaps revisit the land of the Gaul, and 
relate to her compatriots the affliction sore which long time 
she bore among ces barbares. 

In reality, Mademoiselle Batiste is an excellent servant ; 
she is not only apt but erudite in all the cunning of her craft. 
M. Anatole, of Begent Street, might take lessons in hair- 
dressing from her. She far surpasses Miss Tarlatan in dress- 
making ; although she disdains to include that accomplish- 
ment in the curriculum of her duties. But her principal 
skill lies in putting on a dress, in imparting to her mistress 
when dressed an air, a grace, a tournure, which any but a 
Prench hand must ever despair of accomplishing. Yet she 
grumbles meanwhile ; and when she has made a peri of 



More Places Wanted. 97 

a peeress, sighs dolefully and maintains that an English- 
Avoman does not know how to wear a robe. This skill it is 
that makes her fretfulness and melancholial distemper borne 
with by rank and fashion. She has, besides, a pedigree of 
former engagements of such magnitude and grandeur, that 
rank and fashion are fain to bow to her caprices. The beau- 
teous Duchesse de Faribole in Paris, and the Marquise de 
Lysbrisee (very poor, very Legitimist, but intensely fashion- 
able) j the famous Princess Cabbagioso at Florence, Countess 
Moskamujikoff at St. Petersburgh, the Duchess of Cham- 
pignon, the Marchioness of Truffleton and Lady Prances 
Frongus in England — all these high-born ladies has she 
delighted with her skill, awed with her aristocratic antece- 
dents, and annoyed with her melancholia. Although so highly 
skilled in dress-making she pays but little regard to cos- 
tume herself. Her figure is straight all the way down, on 
all sides. She wears a long pendent shawl, a dreary bonnet 
with trailing ribbons; and carries, when abroad, a long, 
melancholy, attenuated umbrella, like a parasol that had out- 
grown itself, and was wasting away in despair. These, with 
the long dull gold drops to her ear-rings ; two flat thin 
smooth bands of hair flattened upon her forehead ; long list- 
less fingers, and long feet encased in French boots of lustre- 
less kid, give her an unspeakably mournful, trailing appear- 
ance. She seems to have fallen altogether into the " portion 
of weeds and outgrown faces." Her voice is melancholy and 
tristfully surgant, like an iEolian harp ; her delivery is remi- 
niscent of the Dead March in Saul; — a few wailing, lingering- 
notes, closed with a melancholy boom at the end of the 
strophe. Adieu, Mademoiselle Batiste. 

H 



98 Dutch PiBures. 

There are many more lady's-maids who want places ; 
and, taking into consideration the increased facilities offered 
by the abolition of the duty on advertisements, I sincerely 
hope they may all be suited satisfactorily. But I cannot 
tarry to discuss all their several qualifications. Although I 
can conscientiously recommend "Wilkins" (Christian name 
unknown), the lady's-maid of middle age, and domesticated 
habits, who was with Mrs. Colonel Stodger during the whole 
of the Sutlej campaign ; who is not too proud to teach the 
cook how to make curries ; is reported to have ridden (with 
her mistress) in man's saddle five hundred miles on camel's 
back in India, and to have done something considerable to- 
wards shooting a plundering native discovered in Mrs. Stod- 
ger's tent. Nor would I have you overlook the claims of 
Martha Stirpenny, who is a "young lady's-maid," and is not 
above plain needlework ; or of Miss Catchpole, the maid, 
nurse, companion, amanuensis, everything, for so many years to 
the late Miss Plough, of Maunday Ten-ace, Bayswater, who 
ungratefully left all her vast wealth in Bank and India stock 
to the " Total Abstinence from Suttee Hindoo Widow's So- 
ciety," offices Great St. Helens, secretary, G. F. L. B. 
Stoneybatter, Esq. ; and bequeathed to her faithful Catchpole, 
after twenty years' service, only a silver teapot and a neatly- 
bound set of the Eev. Doctor Duffaboxe's sermons. All 
these domestics want places, and all letters to them must be 
post-paid. 

AS COOK (Professed) a Person who fully understands her business. 
Address L., Pattypan Place, Great Brazier Street. 

There is something honest, outspoken, fearless, in this 
brief advertisement. L. does not condescend to hint about 



More Places Wanted. 99 

the length and quality of her character, or the distinguished 
nature of the family she wishes to enter. " Here I am," she 
seems to say ; " a professed cook. If you are the sort of 
person knowing what a professed cook is, and how to use her, 
try me. Good cooks are not so plentiful that they need 
shout for custom. Good wine needs no bush. I stand upon 
my cooking, and if you suit me as I suit you, nothing but a 
spoilt dinner shall part us two." L., whom we will incarnate 
for the nonce as Mrs. Lambswool, widow, is fat and forty, 
but not fair. The fires of innumerable kitchen ranges have 
swarthed her ruddy countenance to an almost salamandrine 
hue. • And she is a salamander in temper too, is Mrs. Lambs- 
wool, for all her innocent name. Lambswool, deceased 
(formerly clerk of the kitchen to the Dawdle club), knew it to 
his cost, poor man ; and for many a kept back dinner and 
unpraised made dish did he suffer in his time. 

If Fate could bring together (and how seldom Tate does 
bring together things and persons suited for one another), 
Mrs. Lambswool and Sir Chyle Turrener, how excellently 
they would agree! Sir Chyle — who dwells in Bangnrarry 
Crescent, Hordover 'Square, and whose house as you pass it 
smells all day like a cook-shop — made his handsome compe- 
tence in the war time by contracts for mess-beef as execrable, 
and mess-biscuits as weevily, as ever her Majesty's service, 
by sea or land, spoilt their digestion and their teeth with. 
He is, in these piping times of peace, renowned as the most 
accomplished epicure in the dining world. He does not dine 
often at his club, the Gigot (although that establishment 
boasts of great gastronomic fame, and entertains a head man 
cook at a salary of two hundred and fifty pounds a year) ; he 

H 2 



roo Dutch Pictures, 

accused M. Eelevay, the clief in question, of paying more 
attention to the greasing and adornment of his hair, and the 
composition of his bills of fare in ornamental penmanship, 
than to the culinary wants of the members ; he will not have 
a man cook himself; "the fellows," he says, "are as con- 
ceited as peacocks and as extravagant as Cleopatra." Give 
him a woman cook — a professed cook, who knows her busi- 
ness, and does it : and the best of wages and the best of 
places are hers, at 35, Bangmarry Crescent. 

Let us figure him and Mrs. Lambswool together. Sir 
Chyle — a little apple-faced old gentleman with a white head, 
and as fiery in temper as his cook — looks on Mrs. Lambs- 
wool as, next to the dinners she cooks and the government 
annuity in which (with a sagacious view towards checking the 
prodigality of his nephew and expectant heir) he has sunk 
his savings, the most important element in his existence. 
He places her in importance and consideration far beyond the 
elderly female attached to [his household in the capacity of 
wife — used by him chiefly in forming a hand at whist and 
in Helping soup (catch Sir Chyle trusting her with fish !) and 
by him abused at every convenient opportunity. He abso- 
lutely forbids any interference on her part with the culinary 
economy and discipline. "Blow up the maids as much 
as you like, Ma'am," he considerately says, "but don't 
meddle with my cook." Mrs. L. crows over her mistress 
accordingly, and if she were to tell her that pea soup was best 
made with bilberries, the poor lady would, I dare say, take 
the dictum for granted. Sir Chyle Turrener is exceedingly 
liberal in all matters of his own housekeeping— although he 
once wrote a letter to the Times virulently denouncing soup- 



More Places Wanted. joi 

kitchens. When a dinner of a superlative nature has issued 
from his kitchen, he not unfrequently, iu the warmth of his 
admiration, presents Mrs. Lambswool with gratuities in 
money ; candidly admitting that he gives them now, because 
lie does not intend to leave his cook a penny when he dies, 
seeing that she can dress no more dinners for him after his 
decease. On grand occasions she is summoned to the dining- 
room, at the conclusion of the repast, and he compliments 
her formally on this or that culinary triumph. He lauds her 
to his friends Tom Aitchbone, of the Beefsteak club, Com- 
mon Councillor Podge, Sergeant Buffalo, of the Southdown 
circuit, and old Sir Thomas Marrowfat, who was a prothono- 
taryto something, somewhere, some time — no matter when or 
where — and can nose a dinner in the lobby (the poor old 
fellow can hardly hold his knife and fork for the palsy, and 
his napkin tucked under his wagging old chin looks like a 
grave-cloth) with as much felicity as Hamlet stated that the 
remains of King Claudius's chamberlain might have been 
discovered. It is a strong point in the Turrener and Lams- 
wool creed and practice to hold all cookery-books — for any 
practical purposes beyond casual reference — in great indiffer- 
ence, not to say contempt. Sir Chyle has Glasse and Kit- 
chener, Austin, and Ude, Francatelli, and Soyer, besides the 
Almanack des Gourmands, and the Cuisinier Royal in his 
library, gorgeously bound. He glances at them occasionally 
as Bentley, the critic, might have glanced at a dictionary or a 
lexicon ; but he does not tie himself nor does he bind his 
cook to blind adherence to their rules. True cookery, in his 
opinion, should rest mainly on tradition, on experience, and 
pre-eminently, in the inborn genius of a cook. Mrs. Lambs- 



102 Dutch Pictures. 

wool holds the same opinion, although she may express it in 
different language. She may never have heard of the axiom, 
" One becomes a cook, but one is born a roaster ; " but she 
will tell you in her own homely language that " roasting and 
bili ng comes nateral, and some is good at it, and some 
isn't." Her master has told her the story of Yatel and 
his fish martyrdom, but she holds his suicide to have been 
rank cowardice. " If there was'nt no fish," she. remarks, 
"and it wasn't his fault, why couldn't he have served up 
something neat in the made-dish way, with a bit of a speech 
about being drove up into a corner ?" But she hints darkly 
as to what she would have done to the fishmonger. Trans- 
fixure on a spit, would have been too good for him, a 
wretch. 

Through long years of choice feeding might this pair roll 
on, till the great epicure, Death, pounces on Sir Chyle Tur- 
rener to garnish his sideboard. « If dainty pasture can im- 
prove meat, he will be a succulent morsel. He has fed on 
many things animate and inanimate : Nature will return the 
compliment then. Tor all here below is vanity, and even 
good dinners and professed cooks cannot last for ever. The 
fishes have had their share of Lucullus, and Apicius has 
helped to grow mustard and cress these thousand years. So 
might the knight and the cook roll on, I say ; but a hundred 
to one if they ever come in contact. The world is very wide ; 
and, although the heiress with twenty thousand pounds, who 
has fallen in love with us, lives over the way, we marry the 
housemaid, and our heads grow grey, and we die, and we never 
reck of the heiress. Sir Chyle Turrener may, at this moment, 
be groaning in exasperation at an unskilful cook, who puts 



More Places Wanted. 103 

too much pepper in his soup and boils his fish to flakes ; and 
Mrs. Lambswool's next place may be with a north country 
squire with no more palate than a boa constrictor, who 
delights in nothing half so much as a half-raw beefsteak, or 
a pie with a crust as thick as the walls of the model prison, 
and calls made dishes " kickshaws." 

" As Good Cook in a private family," &c, Ssc, &c, — 
the usual formula, with a hint as to irreproachable character, 
and a published want of objection to the country. The 
Good Cook does not pretend to the higher mysteries or the 
' professed.' I doubt if she knows what a bain marie pan 
is, or what Mayonnaises, Salmis, Sautes, Fricandeazix, Gratins, 
or Souffles are. Her French is not even of the school of 
" Stratford-atte-Bow,' and she does not understand what a met 
can mean. Her stock made dishes are veal cutlets, haricot mut- 
ton, stewed eels, and Irish stew. She makes ail these well ; 
and very good things they are in their way. She is capital 
at a hand of pork and pea soup ; at pigeon pies ; at roasting, 
boiling, frying, stewing, and baking. She is great at pies 
and puddings, and has a non-transcribed receipt for plum pud- 
ding, which she would not part with for a year's wages. She 
can cook as succulent, wholesome, cleanly a dinner as any 
Christian man need wish to set down to ; but she is not an 
artist. Her dinners are not in the " first style." She may 
do for Bloomsbury, but not for Belgravia. 

HOUSEMAID (where a footman is kept), a respectable young woman, 
with three years' good character. Address L. B., Gamms Court, 
Lamb's Conduit Street. 

Letitia Brownjohn, who wishes to be a housemaid, who 

has three years' good character (by her pronounced " krakter") 



i04 Dutch Pictures. 

is two-and-twenty years of age. Her father is a smith, or a 
pianoforte maker, or a leather dresser, stifling with a large 
family in Gamms Court. Her mother has been out at ser- 
vice in her time, and Letitia is in the transition state now — 
in the chrysalis formation of domestic drudgery ; which she 
hopes to exchange some day for the full-blown butterfiyhood 
of a home, a husband, a family, and domestic drudgery of 
her own. Ah, Letitia, for all that you are worried now by 
captions mistresses, the time may come when, in some stifling 
Gamms Court of your own, steaming over a washtub, with 
a drunken husband and a brood of ragged children, you may 
sigh for your quiet kitchen, the cat, the ticking clock, the 
workbox in the area window, and your cousin (in the Guards) 
softly whispering and whistling outside the area railings. 

Letitia Brownjohn, like most other young ladies of the 
housemaid calling, has had an university education. Xot, I 
need scarcely tell, at theological Oxford, or logarithmical 
Cambridge ; nor at the Silent Sister's, who would not suit 
Letitia by any means ; nor at Durham, famous for its mus- 
tard and its mines; nor at any one of those naughty 
colleges in Ireland which the Pope is so angry with ; nor 
even at any one of the colleges recently instituted in this 
country " for ladies only," as the railway carriages have it — 
yet in an university. Letitia, as most of the university-edu- 
cated do, went in the first instance to a public school ; that 
founded by Lady Honoria Woggs (wife of King William the 
Third's Archbishop Woggs), where intellectual training was 
an object of less solicitude by the committee of management 
than the attainment of a strong nasal style of vocal elocution, 
as applied to the sacred lyrics of Messrs. Sternhold and Hop- 



More Places Wanted. 105 

'kins, and the wearing a peculiarly hideous costume, accurately 
copied and followed from the painted wooden statuette of one 
of Lady Wogg's girls, in Lady Wogg's own time, placed in a 
niche over the porch of the dingy brick building containing 
Lady Wogg's school, and flanked in another niche by another 
statuette of a young gentleman in a muffin cap and leathers, 
representing one of Lady Woggs's boys. 

From this establishment our Letitia passed, being some 
nine or ten years of age, to the university ; and there she 
matriculated, and there she graduated. Do you know that 
university to which three-fourths — nay, nineteen- twentieths — 
of our London-bred children " go up ? " Its halls and colleges 
are the pavement and the gutter ; its lecture-theatre the 
doorstep and the post at the corner ; its schools of philosophy 
are the chandler's shop, the cobbler's stall, and the public- 
house ; of which the landlord is the chancellor ; its proctor 
and bull-dogs are the police-sergeant and his men ; its public 
Orators, the ballad-singers and last-dying-speech criers ; its 
lecturers are scolding women. The weekly wages of its occu- 
pants form its university chest. Commemoration takes place. 
every Saturday night, with grand musical performances from 
the harp, guitar, and violin, opposite the "Admiral Keppel," 
The graduates are mechanics and small tradesmen and their 
wives. The undergraduates are Letitias and Tommies. The 
University is the Street. 

Eight in its centre stands the Tree of Knowledge of good 
and evil. And all day long children come and pluck the 
fruit and eat it ; and some choose ripe and wholesome fruit, 
the pleasant savour of which shall not depart out of their 
months readily ; but some elect bad. and rotten apples, 



106 Dutch PiStures. 

which they fall upon and devour gluttonously, so that the 
fruit disagrees with them very much indeed, and causes them 
to break all out in such eruptions of vicious humours, as 
their very children's children's blood shall be empoisoned 
with, years hence. And some, being young and foolish and 
ignorant, take and eat indiscriminately of the good and of 
the bad fruit, and are sick and sorry or healthful and glad 
alternately ; but might fare badly and be lost in the long- 
run did not Wisdom and Love (come from making of rain- 
bows and quelling of storms, perhaps a million miles away, 
to consider of the sparrows and take stock of the flies in the 
back street university) appear betimes among these young un- 
dergraduates gathered under the branches, andteach their hearts 
how to direct their hands to pluck good sustenance from that 
tree. I never go down a back street and look on the multitude of 
children (I don't mean ragged, Bedouin children, but decently 
attired young people, of poor but honest parents, living hard 
by, who have no better playing-ground for them), and hear 
them singing their street songs, and see them playing street 
games, and making street friendships, and caballing on door- 
steps, or conspiring by posts, or newsmongering on kerb- 
stones, or trotting along with jugs and halfpence for the 
beer, or listening open-mouthed to the street orators and 
musicians, or watching Punch and the acrobats, or forming 
a ring at a street fight, or gathered round a drunken man, or 
running to a fire, or running from a bull, or pressing round 
about an accident, bonnetless and capless, but evidently 
native to this place — without these thoughts of the university 
and the tree coming into my head. You who may have been 
expensively educated and cared for, and have had a gymna- 



More Places Wanted. 107 

sium for exercise, covered playing courts, class-rooms, cricket- 
fields, ushers to attend you in the hours of recreations ; who 
have gone from school and college into the world , well re- 
commended and with a golden passport, should think more, 
and considerately too, of what a hazardous, critical, dangerous 
nature this street culture is. With what small book-learning 
these poor young undergraduates get, or that their parents 
can afford to provide them with, is mixed simultaneously 
the strangest course of tuition in the ethics of the pawn- 
broker's shop, the philosophy of the public-house, the rhetoric 
of drunken men and shrewish women, the logic of bad asso- 
ciations, and bad examples, and bad language. 

Our Letitia graduated in due course of girlhood, becoming 
a mistress of such household arts as a London-bred girl can 
hope to acquire at the age of fourteen or fifteen. Well, you 
know what sort of a creature the lodging-house maid-of-all- 
work is, and what sort of a life she leads. You have seen 
her; her pattens and dishevelled cap, her black stockings 
and battered tin candlestick. We have all known Letitia 
Brownjohns — oft-times comely, neat-handed Phillises enough 
— oft-times desperately slatternly and untidy — in almost 
every case wofully over-worked and as wofully underpaid. 
Letitia must be up early and late. With the exception of the 
short intermission of sleep doled forth to her, her work is 
ceaseless. She ascends and descends every step of every 
flight of stairs in the house hundreds of times in the course 
of the day ; she-is the slave of the ringing both of the door 
bell and the lodgers. She must be little more than an 
animated appendage to the knocker — a jack in the box, 
to be produced by a double rap. She is cook, house- 



io8 Dutch Pictures. 

maid, lady's-maid, scullery maid, housekeeper, all in one; 
and for what ? For some hundred and fifty shillings eveiy 
year, and some — few and far between — coppers and sixpences, 
doled out to her in gratuities by the lodgers in consideration 
of her Briarean handiwork. Her holidays are very, very few. 
Almost her only intercourse with the outer world takes place 
when she runs to the public-house at the corner for the dinner 
or supper beer, or to a neighbouring fishmonger for oysters. 

A rigid supervision is kept over her conduct. She is ex- 
pected to have neither friends, acquaintances, relations, nor 
sweethearts. " No followers," is the Median and Persian 
law continually paraded before her ; a law unchangeable, and 
broken only under the most ruinous penalties. When you 
and I grumble at our lot, repine at some petty reverse, fret 
and fume over the curtailment of some indulgence, the depri- 
vation of some luxury, we little know what infinite gradations 
of privation and suffering exist ; and what admirable and exem- 
plary contentment and cheerfulness are often to be found among 
those whose standing is on the lowest rounds of the ladder. 

But Letitia is emancipated from the maid-of-all-work 
thraldrom now, and . aspires to be a " Housemaid where a 
footman is kept," yet not without considerable difficulty, and 
after years of arduous f apprenticeship and servitude. With 
the maid-of-all-work, as she begins, so 'tis ten to one that as 
such she ends. I have known grey-headed maids-of-all- 
work ; and from these — with a sprinkling of insolvent laun- 
dresses and widows who have had their mangles seized for 
rent — is recruited, and indeed, organised, the numerous and 
influential class of " charwomen " who do household work 
for eighteenpence a day and a glass of spirits. 



More Places Wanted. 109 

But Letitia Brownjohn has been more fortunate. Some 
lady lodger, perchance, in some house in whichs he has been 
a servitor, has taken a fancy to her ; and such lodger, taking 
in due course of human eventuality a house for herself, has 
taken Letitia to be her own private housemaid. And she 
has lived with City families, and tradesmen's families, and in 
boarding-schools, and she has grown from the untidy " gal " 
in the black stockings, and the mob cap, to be a natty 
young person in a smart cap and ribands, aspiring to a situa- 
tion where a footman is kept. That she may speedily obtain 
such an appointment ; that the footman may be worthy of his 
companion in service ; that they may please each other (in 
due course of time), even to the extent of the asking of banns 
and the solemnisation of a certain service, I very cheerfully 
and sincerely wish. 





VIII. 



OLD LADJES. 



A RE there any old ladies left, now-a-days ? The question 
-£-*- may at first appear absurd ; for, by the returns of the 
last census we find that seven per cent, of the whole female 
population were, four years since, widows ;* and that, at the 
same period, there were in Great Britain three hundred and 
fifty-nine thousand nine hundred and sixty-nine ". old maids " 
above the age of forty. Yet I repeat my question, and am 
prepared to abide by the consequences : Are there any old 
ladies left, now-a-days ? 

Statistically, of course, substantially even, old ladies are 
as plentiful as of yore ; but I seek in vain for the old lady 
types of my youth ; the feminine antiquities that furnished 
forth my juvenile British Museum. Every omnibus-conduc- 
tor has his old lady passenger — pattens, big basket, umbrella, 
The cabman knows the old lady well — her accurate measure- 
ment of mileage, her multitudinous packages, for which she 
resists extra payment ; her objections to the uncleanliness of 
the straw and the dampness of the cushion ; her incessant use 
of the checkstring and frequent employment of a parasol 
handle, or, a key, dug into the small of the driver's back as a 

* Written a.d. 1855. 



Old Ladies. 1 1 1 

means of attracting his attention ; her elaborate but contra- 
dictory directions as to where she wishes to be set down ; 
and, finally, her awful threats of fine, imprisonment, and 
treadmill should that much-ill-used Ixion-at-sixpence-a-mile 
offend her. No railway train starts without an old lady, who 
screams whenever the whistle is sounded ; groans in the tun- 
nels ; is sure there is something the matter with the engine ; 
smuggles surreptitious poodles into the carriage ; calls for tea 
at stations where there are no refreshment-rooms ; summons 
the guard to the door at odd times during the journey, and 
tells him he ought to be ashamed of himself, because the train 
is seven minutes behind time ; insists upon having the window 
up or down at precisely the wrong periods ; scrunches the 
boots of her opposite neighbour, or makes short lunges into 
his waistcoat during intempestive naps, and, should he remon- 
strate, indulges in muttered soliloquies, ending with, "One 
doesn't know who one is travelling with, now-a-days;" and 
carries a basket of provisions, from which crumbs disseminate 
themselves unpleasantly on all surrounding laps and knees, 
and from which the neck of a small black bottle will peep : 
the cork being always mislaid in the carriage, and causing 
unspeakable agonies to the other passengers in the efforts for 
its recovery. There are old ladies at every theatre, who 
scream hysterically when guns are discharged ; who, when the 
Blaze of Bliss in the Eealms of Dioramic Delight takes place, 
seem on the point of crying " Fire ! " and who persist in sit- 
ting before you in huge bonnets, apparently designed expressly 
to s^ut out the dangerous seductions of the ballet. Churches 
teem with old ladies — from the old ladies in the pews who 
knock down the prayer-books during the "I publish the 



ii2 Dutch Piclures. 

banns/' and turn over the mouldy hassocks, blinding 
you with a cloud of dust *and straw-chips, — to the old 
ladies, mouldier and dustier than the hassocks, who open 
the pews, cough for sixpences, and curtsey for shillings ; and 
the very old ladies who sit in the free seats, have fits during 
the sermon, and paralysis all through the service. There are 
old ladies in ships upon the high seas who will speak ' to the 
man at the wheel ; in bad weather, moaningly request to be 
thrown overboard, and block up the companion-ladder — mere 
senseless bundles of sea-sick old-ladyism. There is never a 
crowd without an old lady in it. The old lady is at almost 
every butcher's shop, at almost every grocer's retail establish- 
ment, on Saturday nights. Every housemaid knows an old 
lady who objected to ribands, counted the hearthstones, 
denounced the "fellows" (comprising the police, the house- 
hold troops, and the assistants of the butcher and grocer 
aforesaid), and denied that the cat broke all the crockery at 
her (the housemaid's) last place. Every cook has been wor- 
retted dreadfully, by the old lady ; every country parson knows 
her and dreads her, for she interferes with the discipline of 
the village school, and questions the orthodoxy of his sermons. 
Every country doctor is aware of, and is wroth with her ; for 
there is either always something the matter with her, or else 
she persists in dosing, pilling, and plaistering other old ladies 
who have something the matter with them, to the stultifica- 
tion of the doctor's prescriptions, and the confusion of science. 
The missionaries would have little to eat, and nobody to eat 
them up in the South Seas, were it not for the old ladies. 
Exeter Hall in May would be a howling wilderness, but for 
the old ladies in the front seats, their umbrellas, and white 



Old Ladies. 113 

pocket-handkerchiefs. And what Professor Methusaleh and 
his pills, Professor Swallow with his ointment, Doctor Bumble- 
puppy with his pitch-plaisters, and Mr. Spools, M.E.C.S., 
with his galvano-therapeutic blisters, would do without old 
ladies I'm sure I don't know. Yea, and the poor-boxes of the 
police-courts for their Christmas five-pound notes, the desti- 
tute for their coals and blankets, the bed-ridden old women 
for their flannel petticoats would often be in sorry plight but 
for the aid of the old ladies, bless them ! At every birth and 
at every death there is an old lady. I have heard that old 
ladies are sometimes seen at courts. It is whispered that old 
ladies have from time to time been found in camps. Nay, irre- 
verent youth, hot-headed, inconsiderate youngsters, doubtless 
— bits of boys — have sometimes the assurance to hint that old 
ladies have, within these last thousand years, been known to 
sit the councils of royalty, and direct the movement of armies, 
the intricacies of diplomacy, and the operations of commerce. 

But these are not my old ladies. Search the wide world 
through, and bring before me legions of old ladies, and I shall 
still be asking my old question. 

No. I will be positive and give my self-asked question 
a negative, once for all. There are no old ladies now-a-days- 
You know as well as I do that there are no children now; no 
tender rump-steaks ; no good-fellows ; no good books ; no 
chest-tenors ; no clever actors ; no good tragedies, and no old 
port wine. The old ladies have followed all these vanished 
good things. If they exist at all, they exist only to that 
young generation which is treading on our corns and pushing 
us from our stools, which laughs in its sleeve at us, and calls 
us old fogies behind our backs; to that generation which 

1 



ii4 Dutch Pictures. 

yet believes in the whisperings of fancy, the phantoms of hope, 
and the performance, by age, of the promises of youth. The 
old women have even disappeared. Women there are, and 
old, but no old women. The old woman of Berkeley; the 
old woman of Tutbury, who so marvellously supported her- 
self by suction from her pocket-handkerchief; the aerostatic 
old woman who effected an ascent so many times higher than 
the moon ; the old woman who lived in a shoe, and frugally 
nurtured her numerous offspring upon broth without bread; 
the delightful old woman, and member of the society for the 
prevention of cruelty to animals — Mother Hubbard — who so 
tenderly entertained that famous dog, though, poor soul, she 
was often put to it, to find him a bone in her cupboard ; the 
eccentric old woman who, is it possible to imagine it, lived 
upon nothing but victuals and drink, and yet would never be 
quiet (she vanished from my youthful ken at about the same 
time as the old man of Tobago — who lived on rice, sugar, arid 
sago) ; the terrible old French woman La Mere Croquemitaine 
who went about France with a birch and a basket, where- 
with to whip and carry away naughty little girls and 
boys, and who has now been driven away herself by the 
principals of genteel seminaries in the Champs Ely sees ; the 
marvellous, fearsome old women of witchcraft, with brooms, 
hell-broths, spells, and incantations ; the good and wicked 
old women of the Arabian Nights and the Child's Own Book ; 
fairy godmothers ; hump-backed old women sitting by well- 
sides ; cross old women gifted with magic powers, who were 
inadvertently left out of christening invitations, and wove* 
dreadful spells in consequence ; good women in the wood ; 



Old Ladies. 115 

old women who had grandchildren wearing little Pcedriding- 
hoods and meeting (to their sorrow) wolves ; Mother Goose, 
Mother Redcap, even Mother Damnable (I beg your pardon) 
— all this goodly band of old women have been swept away. 
There are no types of feminine age left to me now. All the 
picturesque types of life besides seem melting away. It is all 
coming to a dead level : a single line of rails, with signals, 
stations, points, and turntables ; and the Cradle Train starts 
at one fifteen, and the Coffin Train is due at twelve forty-five. 
— An iron world. 

Somewhere in the dusty room, of which the door has been 
locked for years, I have a cupboard. There, among the old 
letters — how yellow and faded the many scored expressions of 
affection have grown ! the locks of hair ; the bygone washing- 
bills — " one pare sox, one frunt ;" the handsome bill of costs 
(folio, foolscap, stitched with green ferret) that came up as a 
rider to that small legacy that was spent so quickly; the 
miniature of the lady in the leg of mutton sleeves ; the por- 
traits of Self and Schoolfriend — Self in a frilled collar, grin- 
ning ; Schoolfriend in a lay-down collar, also grinning ; the 
rusted pens ; the squeezed-out-tubes of colour ; the memo- 
randa to be sure to do goodness knows what for goodness 
knows whom ; the books begun ; the checkbooks ended ; the 
torn envelopes ; the wedding cards with true lovers' knots 
dimmed and tarnished ; the addresses of people who are 
dead ; the keys of watches that are sold ; the old passports, 
old hotel bills, dinner tickets, and theatrical checks; the 
multifarious odds and ends that will accumulate in cupboards, 
be your periodical burnings ever so frequent, or your waste 
paper basket system ever so rigorous ; among all these it may 

1 2 



n6 Dutch PiBures. 

be that I can find a portfolio — shadowy or substantial matters 
little — wherein lie nestled, all torn, blotted, faded, mildewed, 
crumpled, stained, and moth-eaten, some portraits of the old 
ladies I should like to find now-a-days. 

Yes ; here is one : The Pretty Old Lady. She must have 
been very, very beautiful when young ; for, in my childish 
eyes ^she had scarcely any imperfections, and we all know 
what acute and unmerciful critics children are. Her hair 
w^as quite white ; not silvery nor pow^dery, but pure glossy 
white, resembling spun glass. I have never been able to 
make my mind up whether she wore a cap, a hood, or one of 
those silken head-coverings of the last century called a calash. 
Whatever she wore, it became her infinitely. I incline, on 
second thoughts, more to the calash, and think she wore it 
in lieu of a bonnet, when she went abroad ; which was but 
seldom. The portrait I have of the old lady is, indeed, 
blurred and dimmed by the lapse of many winters, and some 
tears. Her title of the " pretty old lady " was not given to 
her lightly. It w^as bruited many years ago — when ladies of 
fashion were drunk to, in public, and gentlemen of fashion 
were drunk too in public — that the pretty old lady had been a 
*' reigning toast." 

A certain gray silk dress which, as it had always square 
creases in it, I conjectured to be always new, decorated the 
person of the pretty old lady. She wore a profusion of black 
lace, which must have been priceless, for it was continually 
being "mended, and its reversion was much coveted by the 
old lady's female friends. My aunt Jane, who w r as tremen- 
dously old, and was a Lady ; but whose faculties decayed 
somewhat towards the close of her life, was never so cohe- 



Old Ladies, 1 1 7 

rent (save on the subject of May-day and the sweeps) as when 
she speculated as to " who was to have the lace " after the 
old lady's demise. But my aunt Jane died first, and her 
doubts were never solved. More than this, I can remember 
a fat-faced old gold watch which the pretty old lady wore 
at her waist ; a plethoric mass of gold, like an oyster 
grown rich and knowing the time of day. Attached to this 
she wore some trinkets — not the nonsensical charms 
that young ladies wear at their girdles now, but sensible, 
substantial ornaments — a signet-ring of her grandfather's ; 
a smelling-bottle covered with silver filagree ; and a little 
golden box in the form of a book with clasps, which we 
waggish youngsters declared to be the old lady's snuff- 
box, but which, I believe, now, to have been a pouncet-box — 
the same perhaps, which the lord, who was perfumed like a 
milliner, held 'twixt his finger and his thumb upon the 
battle-field, and which, ever and anon, he gave his nose. 

I trust I am not treading upon dangerous ground, when 
I say, that two of the chief prettinesses of the pretty old lady 
were her feet and their covering. " To ladies' eyes a round, 
boys ! " Certainly, Mr. Moore, we can't refuse ; but to 
ladies' feet, a round boys, also, if you please. Now the 
pretty old lady had the prettiest of feet, with the most deli- 
cate of gray silk stockings, the understandings of the finest, 
softest, most lustrous leather that ever came from innocent 
kid. I will back those feet (to use the parlance of this 
horse-racing age) and those shoes and stockings against any 
in the known world, in ancient or modern history or romance -' 
against Dorathea's tiny feet dabbling in the stream ; agains 
Musidora's paddling in the cool brook ; against Sara la 



n8 Dutch PiBures. 

Baigneuse swinging in her silken hammock; against De Gram- 
mont's Miss Howard's green stockings ; against Madame de 
Pompadonr's golden clocks and red-heeled mules ; against No- 
blet, Taglioni, Cerito's ; against Madame Vestris's, as modelled 
in wax by Signor N. N. There are no snch feet as the pretty 
old lady's now ; or, if any such exist, their possessors don't 
know how to treat them. The French ladies are rapidly 
losing the art of putting on shoes and stocking with taste ; 
and I deliberately declare, in the face of Europe, that I have 
not seen, within the last three months in Paris — from the 
Boulevard des Italiens to the Ball of the Prefect of the Seine 
— twenty pairs of irreproachable feet. The systematically 
arched instep, the geometrical ankle, the gentle curves and 
undulations, the delicate advancement and retrogression of 
the foot of beauty, are all things falling into oblivion. The 
American overshoes, the machine-made hosiery, and the 
trailing draperies, are completing the ruin of shoes and 
stockings. 

The pretty old lady had never been married. Her father 
had been a man of fashion — a gay man — a first-rate buck, a 
sparkling rake ; he had known lords, he had driven curricles, 
he had worn the finest of fine linen, the most resplendent of 
shoe-buckles ; he had once come into the possession of five 
thousand pounds sterling, upon which capital — quite casting 
the grovelling doctrine of interest to the winds— he had de- 
termined to try the fascinating experiment of living at the 
rate of five thousand a-year. In this experiment he succeeded 
to his heart's content for the exact period of one year and 
one day, after which he had lived (at the same rate.) on credit ; 
after that on the credit of his credit ; after that on his wits ; 



Old Ladies. 119 

after that in the rules of the King's Bench ; after that on the 
certainty of making so many tricks, nightly at whist ; and, 
finally upon his daughter. For the pretty old lady, with 
admirable self-abnegation, had seen her two ugly sisters 
married ; had, with some natural tears, refused Captain Cutts, 
of the line, whom she loved (but who bad nothing but his 
pay) and had contentedly accepted the office of a governess ; 
whence, after much self-denial, study, striving, pinching, and 
saving (how many times her little cobwebs of economy were 
ruthlessly swept away by her gay father's turn for whist and 
hazard —cobwebs that took years to reconstruct!), she had 
promoted herself to the dignity of a schoolmistress ; governing 
in that capacity that fine old red-brick ladies' seminary at 
Paddington, — pulled down for the railway now — Porchester 
House. 

'Twas there I first saw the pretty old lady : for I had a 
cousin receiving her " finishing " at Porchester House, and 
'twas there — being at the time some eight years of age — 
that I first fell in love with an astonishingly beautiful crea- 
ture, with raven hair and gazelle-like eyes, who was about 
seventeen, and the oldest girl in the school. When I paid 
my cousin a visit 1 was occasionally admitted — being of a 
mild and walery disposition, and a very little boy of my age 
— to the honours of the tea table. I used to sit opposite to 
this black-eyed Juno, and be fed by her with slices of those 
curious open-work cross-barred jam tarts, which are so fre- 
quently met with at genteel tea-tables. I loved her fondly, 
wildly : but she dashed my spirits to the ground one day, 
by telling me not to make faces. I wonder whether she 
married a duke ! 



i2o Dutch Pictures. 

The pretty old lady kept school at Porchester House for 
many, many years, supporting and comforting that fashionable 
fellow, her father. She had sacrificed her youth, the firstlings 
of her beauty, her love, her hopes, everything. The gay 
fellow had grown a little paralytic at last ; and, becoming- 
very old and imbecile and harmless, had been relegated to an 
upper apartment in Porchester House. Here, for several 
years, he had vegetated in a sort of semi-fabulous existence 
as the " old gentlemen ; " very many of the younger ladies 
being absolutely unaware of him ; till, one evening, a neat 
coffin with plated nails and handles, arrived at Porchester 
House, for somebody aged seventy-three, and the cook re- 
marked to the grocer's young man that the "old gentleman" 
had died that morning. 

The pretty old lady continued the education of genera- 
tions of black-eyed Junos, in Prench, geography, the use of 
the globes, and the usual branches of a polite education, long 
after her father's death. Habit is habit ; Lieutenant-Colonel 
Cutts had died of a fever in the Walcheren expedition — so 
the pretty old lady kept school at Porchester House until she 
was very, very old. When she retired, she devised all her 
savings to her ugly sisters' children ; and calmly, cheerfully, 
placidly prepared to lie herself down in her grave. Hers 
had been a long journey and a sore servitude ; but, perhaps, 
something was said to her at the End, about being a good 
and faithful servant, and that it was well done. 

Such is the dim outline which the picture in my port- 
folio presents to me of the pretty old lady. Sharpened as 
her pretty features were by age, the gentle touch of years of 
peace — of an equable mind and calm desires, had passed 



Old Ladies. 121 

lovingly over the acuities of her face, and softened them. 
"Wrinkles she must have had, for the stern usurer Time will 
have his bond ; but she had smiled her wrinkles away, or had 
laughed them into dimples. Our just, though severe mother, 
Nature, had rewarded her for having worn no rouge in her 
youth, no artificial flowers in her spring ; and gave her 
blooming roses in her December. Although the sunset of 
her eyes was come and they could not burn you up, or melt 
you as in the noontide, the sky was yet pure, and the lumi- 
nary sank to rest in a bright halo : the shadows that it cast 
were long, but sweet and peaceful, — not murky and terrible. 
The night was coming ; but it was to be a night starlit with 
faith and hope, and not a season of black storms. 

It was for this reason, I think, that being old, feeling old, 
looking old, proud of being old, and yet remaining handsome, 
the pretty old lady was so beloved by all the pretty girls. They 
adored her. They called her " a dear old thing." They insisted 
upon trying their new bonnets, shawls, scarfs, and similar femi- 
nine fallals, upon her. They made her the fashion, and dressed 
up to her. They never made her spiteful presents of fleecy 
hosiery, to guard against a rheumatism with which she was 
not afflicted ; or entreated her to tie her face up when she 
had no toothache ; or bawled in her ear on the erroneous 
assumption that she was deaf, — as girls will do, in pure 
malice, when age forgets its privileges, and apes the levity 
and sprightliness of youth. Above all, they trusted her with 
love-secrets (I must mention, that though a spinster, the 
pretty old lady was always addressed as Mistress). She was 
great in love matters, — a complete letter- writer, without its 
verbosity : as prudent as Pamela, as tender as Amelia, as 



122 Dutch Pictures. 

judicious as Hooker, as dignified as Sir Charles Grandison. 
She could scent a Lovelace at an immense distance, bid Tom 
Jones mend his ways, reward the constancy of an Uncle 
Toby, and reform a Captain Booth. I warrant the perverse 
widow and Sir Roger de Coverley would have been brought 
together, had the pretty old lady known the parties and been 
consulted. She was conscientious and severe, but not into- 
lerant and implacable. She did not consider every man in 
love a " wretch," or every woman in love a " silly thing." 
She was pitiful to love, for she had known it. She could 
tell a tale of love as moving as any told to her. Its hero 
died at Walcheren. 

Where shall I find pretty old ladies now-a-days ? Where 
are they gone, — those gentle, kindly, yet dignified, antiquated 
dames, married and single ? 

My young friend Sprigly comes and tells me that I 
am wrong, and that there are many good old ladies now as 
of yore. It may be so; it may be, that we think those 
pleasant companionships lost because the years are gone in 
which we enjoyed them ; and that we imagine there are no 
more old ladies, because those we loved are dead. 






IX. 



LITTLE CHILDREN. 

• t "lVTO man can tell," wrote that good Bishop of Down," 
-*- ^ Connor, and Dromore, whose elevation to the mitre 
in an unbelieving and profligate age makes at least one jewel of 
pure water in the besmirched diadem of Charles the Second, 
" No man can tell," wrote Jeremy Taylor, " but he who loves 
his children, how many delicious accents makes a man's heart 
dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges. Their 
childishness, their stammering, their little angers, their inno- 
cence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many little 
emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their 
persons and society." With all due respect and reverence to 
my beloved author of the " Golden Grove," the '''warbler of 
poetic prose," I must dissent from his first proposition. A 
man who loves children can tell, without necessarily having 
any of his own, how delightful is their society, how delicious 
are their accents, their persons, their little ways. It may be that 
I write these lines in a cheerless garret, my only friends my 
books, the only other thing beside me that has life, my lamp ; 
yet do you not think that I can sympathise with, without 
envying, the merry party at the merry house over the way ? 



124 Dutch PiBures. 

— the house with all the windows lighted up, the broughams 
and hack cabs at the door ; the prim, white neckclothed visi- 
tors taking off their paletots in the passage ; the smiling, 
ringleted, rosy cheeked, rosy ribboned young person who 
attends to the ladies' bonnets and the tea and coffee ; the 
jangling of Collard and Collard's piano; the tinkling of 
Erard's harp; the oscillations in their upstairs passage of the 
negus glasses , the singing, the dancing, the flirtation, and 
the supper. Yet, I know nothing about Mrs. Saint-Baffin 
and her evening party. She never invited me to it : she does 
not know, very probably, of my existence ; but I am sure I 
wish most sincerely that her " at home " may be perfectly 
satisfactory and successful ; that every body may get as much 
as he wants to eat and drink at supper ; that the supply of 
lobster salad and iced champagne may not run short ; that 
Miss Strumminson's " Cossacco della Volga " may be sung 
by that young lady amid general applause ; that all Geueral 
Fogey's stories may tell, and that none of young Miller's 
jokes may have been heard before ; that the right men may 
secure their right hats and right wrappers ; that all the young 
ladies may depart duly shawled and bonnetted, to the defiance 
and confusion of the demon cold ; that all mammas may be 
placable ; all true lovers satisfied with their innocent flirta- 
tions ; all stolen camellias, scraps of riband, and odd gloves 
warmly prized ; that years to come there may be little 
children laughing and playing round papa and mamma, all 
unconscious that papa and mamma first thought of love and 
courtship and matrimony over lobster salad, iced cham- 
pagne, or the valse a deux temps at Mrs. Saint-Baffin's " at 
home." 



Little Children. 125 

Come ! Though I am not bidden to the banquet — 
though there be no cover laid for me at the table matrimonial 
— may I not feast (though in no ogre fashion) upon little 
children? Some day perhaps Hymen's table may lack 
guests ; and, messengers being sent out into the highways 
in quest of the lame, the halt, and the blind, I may have a 
chance. 

I might speculate upon little children in a purely negative 
fashion for some time. For instance : as regards the child 
being father to the man : of men being but children of a 
larger growth. These are both very easy things to sav ; and 
we get them by heart pat, and somewhat in the parrot man- 
ner ; and we go on repeating our pet phrase, over and over, 
backwards and forwards, time after time, till we firmly believe 
it to be true ; and, if any one presume to argue or dissent, 
we grow indignant, and cry "turn him out;" as the member 
of the Peace Society did the other day, when an opinionated 
person happened to dissent from the whole hog proposition 
that the world was to be pacificated, and universal fraternity 
established, by the lambs shearing the wool off their backs, 
and taking it to the wolves in a neat parcel, with a speech 
about arbitration. 

Now at the risk of being turned out myself, I must ven- 
ture to dissent from the axiom that the child is father to the 
man. I say that he is not. Can you persist in telling me 
that this fair-haired innocent — this little sportive, prattling, 
loveable child, with dimpled, dumpling hands that almost 
fold themselves spontaneously into the attitude of supplication 
and prayer ; with cherry lip — " some bee has stung it newly " 
lisping thanksgiving and love ; with arms that long to em- 



126 Dutch Pictures. 

brace ; with eyes beaming confidence, joy, pity, tenderness : 
— am I to be told that this infant is father to yon hulking, 
sodden, sallow-faced, blue-gilled, crop-haired, leaden-eyed, 
livid-lipped, bow-shouldered, shrunken-legged, swollen-handed 
convict in a hideous grey uniform branded with the broad 
arrow ; with ribbed worsted hose and fetters at his ancles, 
sullenly skulking through his drudgery under the rattan of an 
overseer and the bayonet of a marine in Woolwich dockyard ? 
Is the child whom I love and in whom I hope, father to yon 
wretch with a neck already half-dislocated with fear, with 
limbs half-dead, with heart wholly so, who droops on his 
miserable pallet in Newgate cell, his chin on his breast, his 
hands between his knees, his legs shambling ; the stony walls 
around him ; the taciturn gaolers watching him ; a Bible by 
his side, in whose pages, when he tries to read, the letters 
slide and fall away from under his eye ? Is this the father to 
— can this ever become that ? 

Not only in your world-verbiage must the child be father 
to the man, but the man is merely a child of a larger growth. 
I deny it. ■ Some boys are tyrants, bullies, hypocrites, and 
liars for fear of punishment ; thieves alas, through ill-example, 
oftimes. Some girls are tell-tales, jealous, spiteful, slanderous, 
vain and giddy, I grant. If you were to tell me that bad boys 
and girls often grow up to be bad men and women, I should 
agree with you. The evil example of you bad men and women 
begins to corrupt boys and girls early enough, Heaven know T s ; 
but do not brand the child — you know when infancy begins 
and childhood terminates — with being but your own wicked- 
ness seen through the small end of the glass. The man a 
child of larger growth ? Did you ever know a man of smaller 



Little Children. 127 

growth — a child — to discount bills at forty per cent., and 
offer you for the balance half cash, and the rest poison (put 
down in the bill as " wine ") and opera stalls ! Did you ever 
know a child to pawn his sister's play-things, or rob his 
^playmate of his pocket money to gamble,' and to cheat while 
gambling, and to go hang or drown himself when he had lost 
his winnings and his stolen capital ? Could you ever discern 
a hankering in a child to accumulate dollars by trading in the 
flesh and blood of his fellow -creatures ? Did you ever know 
a child to hoard halfpence in a rag or a teapot, to store rinds 
of mouldy cheese in secret, or to grow rich in rotten apple 
parings ? Did you ever hear 'a child express an opinion that 
his friend Tommy must eternally be burnt, for not holding 
exactly the same religious opinions as he, Billy, did ? Are 
children false swearers for hire, liars for gain, parasites for 
profit ? Do they begin to throw mud with their earliest pot- 
hooks and hangers : do they libel their nurse and vilify the 
doctor ? Men have their playthings, it is true, and somewhat 
resemble overgrown children in their puerile eagerness for a 
blue ribbon, an embroidered garter, a silver cross dangling to 
a morsel of red silk, or a gilt walking stick. But will the 
child crawl in the gutter for the blue ribbon, or walk barefoot 
over broken bottles for the garter, or wallow in the mire for 
the gilt walking stick ? I think not. Give him a string of 
red beads, a penny trumpet, or a stick of barley sugar, and he 
will let the ribbons and garters go hang. Try to persuade, 
with your larger growth theory, one of your smaller men to 
walk backwards down a staircase before the King of Lilliput. 
Persuade Colonel Fitz Tommy, aged four, to stand for five 
hours on one leg behind the King of Lilliput's chair in his 



i28 Dutch Pictures. 

box at the Marionette Theatre. Try to induce little Lady 
Totsey, aged three, to accede to the proposal of being maid of 
honour to her doll. Tommy and Totsey leave such tomfool- 
eries to be monopolised by the larger children. 

We have another school of axiomatic philosophers ; who, 
abandoning the theorem that manhood is but the enlarged 
identity of infancy, maintain that the child is an intellectual 
negation — nothing at all physically or mentally. The en- 
lightened M. Fourier has denied children the possession of 
sex, calling them Neuters; and numbers of philosophers, 
with their attendant schools of disciples, have pleased them- 
selves by comparing the child's mind to a blank sheet of 
paper ; innocent, but capable of receiving moral caligraphy, 
good or bad. The mind of a child like a blank sheet of Bath 
post!" The sheet is fair, hot-pressed, undefiled by blot or 
erasure if you will, but not a blank. In legible ineffaceable 
characters thereupon, you may read Faith and strong belief. 
The child believes without mental reservation ; he does not 
require to be convinced ; and if even, now and then, some 
little struggling dawn of argumentative scepticism leads him 
to doubt faintly, and to ask how bogey can always manage to 
live in the cellar among the coals ; how the black dog can be 
on his shoulder, when he sees no dog there ; why little boys 
should not ask questions, and why the doctor should have 
brought baby with him under his cloak — he is easily silenced 
by the reply that good children always believe what is told 
them ; and that he must believe ; so he does believe. His 
faith was but shaken 1 ' for a moment. Belief was written too 
strongly in his little heart to be eradicated by any little logic. 
Would that when he comes to be a child of larger growth, 



Little Children. 129 

forsooth, no subtle powers of reasoning should prompt him to dis- 
sect and anatomise his body of belief, till nothing but dry bones 
remain, and it fall into a pit of indifference and scepticism ! 

That child has a maimed child-mind who does not believe 
implicitly in all the fairy tales — in the existence of ogres, 
fairies, giants, and dwarfs. I dare say thousands will read 
this who have lain a-bed as children, awake, and quaking lest 
Hurlothrumbo, or the dread Giant Bolivorax, or the wolf 
that devoured little Eed Biding Hood should enter unto 
them and devour them. How many do I address who have 
cherished one especial beanstalk in the back garden as the 
very identical beanstalk up which Jack clomb ; and, in the 
slightness of their childish vision, deemed that the stalk grew 
up and up till it reached the wondrous land of faery — who, 
also, have firmly believed that the huge pack the old Jew 
pedlar carried on his back was full of naughty children ; and 
that from parsley-beds, by means of silver spades, fruits — of 
whose species Mr. Darwin is aware — were procured. I 
remember having when a very little child two strong 
levers of belief. One was a very bright fire-place with a 
very bright fender, very bright fire irons, and a very bright 
coloured rug before it. I can see them now, all polished 
steel, brass and gay worsted work — and all of which I 
saw strictly forbidden to touch. The other was a certain 
steel engraving in an album : a landscape with a lake, and 
swans, and ladies with parasols. I know the fire-place now 
to have been a mere register stove with proper appurtenances, 
and the picture an engraving of the Park of St. Cloud after 
Turner; but I declare that T firmly, heartily, uncompro- 
misingly believed then, that angels' trumpets were like those 

K 



130 Dutch Pictures. 

fire-irons, and that the gay rug, and the pretty landscape was 
an accurate view if not an actual peep into Fairyland itself. 
A little dead sister of mine used to draw what we called 
fairyland on her slate. 'Twas after all, I dare say, but a vile 
childish scrawl, done over a half smeared-out game of oughts 
and crosses, with a morsel of slate pencil, two sticks a half- 
penny. Yet I and she and all of us believed in the fairyland 
she drew. We could pluck the golden fruit on the boughs, 
and hear the silver-voiced birds, and see the fairy elves with 
their queen (drawn very possibly with a head like a deformed 
oyster) dancing beneath the big round moon upon the yellow 
sands. I am sure my sister believed her doll was alive and 
peculiarly susceptible to catching cold from draughts. I am 
certain that I never questioned the animated nature of the 
eight-day clock on the staircase that ticked so awfully in the 
hot silent summer nights, and gnashed its teeth so feroci- 
ously when his weights were moved. My aunt promised 
everything when her ship came home ; and I believed in the 
ship that was always coming and never did come, without 
one spark of scepticism. I believed in, and shuddered at, 
all the stories about that famous juvenile (always held up to 
us as a warning and example, and alluded to as " there was 
once a little boy who ") who was always doing the things he 
ought not to have done ; and was, in consequence, so per- 
petually being whipped, caught in door jambs and suspended 
in the air by meat-hooks, eaten up alive by wild beasts, burnt 
to death in consequence of playing " with Tommy at lighting 
straws," that I have often wondered, so many have been his 
perils, by flood and field, that there should be any of that 
little boy left. He is alive though, nevertheless, and still 



Little Children. 131 

firmly believed in. I was under the necessity the other day of 
relating a horrible misadventure of his to a little nephew of 
mine own, showing how the little boy reached over a dining 
table to put his fingers into a sugar dish, and came to signal 
shame by knocking over a tumbler and cutting his fingers 
therewith ; and I am happy to state that my anecdote was 
not only received as genuine, but met with the additional 
criticism from my small nephew (his own digits still sticky 
with the sugar) that it " served the little boy right." Faith 
and strong belief! When children play at King or Queen, 
or Castles or Schools, they believe that they are in verity the 
persons they enact. We children of a larger growth yawn 
through our parts, requiring a great deal of prompting, and 
waiting, now and again, for the applause ; or, if we be of the 
audience, applaud listlessly, knowing the play to be a de- 
ception. 

Faith and strong belief! How is the child to distinguish 
between the Witch of Endor and the Witch of Edmonton ; 
between Goliah that David slew, and the Giant that Jack 
killed ? Let him believe it all in his happy faithful child- 
hood, I say. Do not think I wish to propagate or encourage 
error. But that young flowret is too tender yet to bear the 
crude blast of uncompromising Eact. And battle with error 
in the child's mind as you will, feed him with diagrams and 
clothe him with Euclid's Elements before he is breeched as 
you may, the innate Belief that is in him, even though draped 
in imaginations and harmless fictions, will beat your logic 
and philosophy hollow. 

On that blank sheet of paper to which you compare a 
child's rhind, I find yet more words written that all may 

K 2 



o 



132 Dutch PicJures. 

read. I find Truth. Prone to believe the most extravagant 
fictions, because his belief is indiscriminating through inno- 
cence, he is yet essentially and legibly a truthteller and is 
logically true. If he objects to you or me he tells us candidly, 
"I don't like you." If asked to assign a reason for his dislike, 
he answers as candidly : '" Because you are old — because you 
are ugly — because you smell of snuff." If he likes his old 
nurse better than his new nurse he tells her so plainly. Herein 
is no cogging, no qualifying, no constructive lying. When 
he demands a present or backsheesh, he employs no bowing 
or scraping ; no beating about the bush to effect his purpose. 
He says simply, " Give Doddy a sugar-plum," and holds out 
his hand. Years to come he will learn to cringe and fawn, 
and write begging letters, and attribute his want of sugar- 
plums to the hardness of the times, or to his having to "take 
up a little bill." So blunt is his truthfulness that it fre- 
quently becomes inconvenient and embarrassing. He makes 
the most alarming revelations, in all innocence and uncon- 
sciousness, respecting the malpractices of the servants, and 
the criticisms passed by bis relatives upon the appearance 
and manners of their friends and acquaintances. He suffers 
in the flesh for this, and is a martyr to his truthfulness. 
Not strong enough in purpose to hate, he is yet afraid and 
ashamed to lie. He blushes and stammers over an untruth. 
Tis practice makes the liar perfect. The infant knows the 
truth and its seat, for it is in his heart, and he has no need 
to go wandering about the earth in search of it, like that 
mad fellow who, hearing that Truth lay at the bottom of a 
well, jumped into a well and was drowned ; finding indeed 
Truth at the bottom — for he found Death. You, foolish, 



Little Children. 133 

cockering mothers, teach your children to lie, when you aid 
them in denying or concealing their faults from those who 
would be stern with them. You, unreasoning, impetuous 
parents, nourish lying scorpions in your bosom, when you • 
beat your children savagely for an involuntary accident, for a 
broken vase, or a torn frock. You give the child a motive 
for concealment ; you sow lying seed that will bear black 
fruit ; you make truth to mean punishment, and falsehood 
impunity. 

In letters as large and bold, as beautiful and clear to 
view, is written on the sheet of paper you are pleased to call 
blank in little children's minds the word Charity. Large- 
hearted, open-handed, self-denying charity. Unreasoning, 
indiscreet, indiscriminate, perchance, but still charity of the 
Christian sort, which, done in secret shall be rewarded openly. 
I am compelled to admit that little children know nothing 
about the Mendicity Society and the indefatigable Mr. Hors- 
ford ; that they have never perused the terrific leaders in the 
Times against street mendicancy, and the sin of indiscriminate 
almsgiving ; that they would, if they could read bad writing, 
become an easy prey to begging letter impostors ; and would 
never be able to steel their hearts against the appeals to the 
benevolent in the newspapers. I must own, too, that their 
charity does not stop at humanity but extends itself to the 
animal creation. I never saw a child feed a donkey with 
macaroons ; but I have seen one little girl press pound-cake 
upon a Shetland pony, and another little girl give half of her 
bread and butter to a four-footed acquaintance of the Newfound- 
land breed. I have watched the charitable instincts of children 
from babyhood to school-hood, when hopes and cankering 



134 Dutch Pictures. 

fears, desire of praise, solicitude for favour and lust of gain 
begin, shutting up charity in an iron-bound strong box of 
small-worldliness. Children love to give. Is it to feed the 
ducks in the park, or slide warm pennies into the palsied 
hands of cripples, or drop them into the trays of blind men's 
dogs, or pop them, smiling, into slits of money-boxes, or 
administer eleemosynary sustenance to Bunny and Tiny the 
rabbits, or give the pig a " poon " — to give it is indeed their 
delight. They want no tuition in charity : it is in them, 
God-sent. Yonder little chubby " sheet of blank stationery" 
who is mumbling a piece of parliament in his nurse's arms, 
has scarcely consciousness of muscular power sufficient to 
teach him to hold the sweetmeat fast ; yet, if I ask baby half 
by word half by gesture to give me a bit, this young short- 
coated Samaritan — who not long since began to "take notice," 
and can only just ejaculate da-da, ma-ma — will gravely 
remove the parliament from his own lips and offer it to mine. 
Were he a very few months older he would clutch it tighter 
in his tiny hand, and break a piece off, and give it me. Is 
not this charity ? He does not know, this young neophyte, 
that the parliament is moist and sticky with much sucking 
and mumbling; that I am too big to eat parliament; and 
that it is mean and paltry in me, a great, hulking, able- 
bodied, working man, to beg cates of him, a helpless infant. 
But he knows in his instinctive sapience that he cannot fill 
my belly with wise saws, or with precepts of political eco- 
nomy. He cannot quote Adam Smith, Bicardo, or S. Gr. O. 
to me; he administers, in his instinctive charity, corporeal 
sustenance to my corporeal necessity. The avaricious infant 
is a monster. 



Little Children. 135 

What word is that that shines so brightly — whose letters 
dance and glitter like precious gems on the so-called blank 
scroll ? Love. Instinct of instincts, inborn of all innate 
things, little children begin to love as soon as they begin to 
live. When mere flaccid helpless babes their tiny faces 
mantle with smiles — ah ! so full of love and tenderness — in 
their sleep. The first use they make of their arms is to clasp 
them round the neck of those they love. And whom will 
they not love ? If the witch Sycorax had nursed Miranda, 
and Caliban had been her foster-brother, the little monster 
and the little maiden would have loved each other, and Pros- 
pero's little child would have kissed and fondled her hideous 
nurse. The first words children utter are words of love. 
And these are not necessarily taught them ; for their very 
inarticulate ejaculations are full of love. They love all things. 
The parrot, though he bites them ; the cat, though she 
scratches ; the great bushy blundering house-dog ; the poultry 
in the yard ; the wooden-legged, one-eyed negro who brings 
the beer ; the country lout with clouted shoon who smells so 
terribly of the stable; the red-faced cook, the' grubby little 
knife-boy, the foolish fat scullion, the cross nurse. They love 
all these ; together with horses, trees, gardens, and toys, and 
break their little hearts (easily mended again, thank Heaven), 
if they are obliged to part from them. And, chief er, still, 
they love that large man with the gruff voice, the blue rough 
chin, the large eyes, whose knees comprise such an inex- 
haustible supply of cock-horses always standing at livery, yet 
always ready to ride post-haste to Coventry : they love papa. 
And, chiefest of all, they love her of the soft voice, the smiles, 
the tears, the hopes, the cares, the tenderness — who is all in. 



136 Dutch Pictures. 

all, the first, the last to them, in their tender, fragile, happy- 
childhood. 

Mamma is the centre of love. Papa was an after ac- 
quaintance. He improves upon acquaintance, too; but 
mamma was always with them to love, to soothe, to caress, 
to care for, to watch over. When a child wakes up hot and 
feverish from some night dream, it is upon his mother he 
calls. Each childish pain, each childish grief, each childish 
difficulty is to be soothed, assuaged, explained by her. The 
pair have no secrets ; they understand each other. The child 
clings to her. The little boy in the Greek epigram that was 
creeping down a precipice was invited to his safety, when 
nothing else could induce him to return, by the sight of his 
mother's breast. 

You who have little children and love them — you will 
have borne patiently with me, I know, through all these 
trivialities. And you, strong-minded philosophers who " celi- 
bate, sit like a fly in the heart of an apple," and dwell indeed 
in perpetual sweetness, but sit alone and are confined and 
die in singularity, excuse my puerility, my little theme, my 
smaller argument, my smallest conclusions. Eemember the 
Master suffered little children to come unto him ; and that, 
strong-minded philosophers as we are, we were all of us, 
once, but little helpless innocents. 



-H>&3iE> 



THE CONVERSION OF COLONEL QTJAGG. 



Some of our religions in#the States are not over well paid. 
Down Punkington way, now, they have a religion with a 
chandelier; at least the chapel in which Eeverend Eufus 
P. Pillsbury officiates has one. That religion has a bell, and 
a weathercock, and a flight of steps of General Buifum's 
patent scagliola adamant, and columns with Corinthian fixings 
outside — bright and handsome. There's another religion in 
those parts though, that has no better chapel than a loft, 
formerly used for warehousing dry goods ; and our citizens 
have to go to worship up a ladder, and through a trap-door. 
Elder Peabody Eagle proposed that they should have a crane 
outside the building, as was the case in Baggby Brothers', 
the former proprietors* time, and so hoist the congregation up 
like cotton or molasses ; but the proposition, though prac- 
tical, was thought irreverent, and came to nothing. Eeverend 
Doctor Nathan Elower, who officiated over the dry goods, 
was very poorly on°. Indeed, people said that he had nothing 
under his black doctor of divinity's gown but a shirt and 
pants, and that his whole income did not amount to two 
hundred dolls, a-year; whereas Eeverend Eufus P. Pillsbury 



138 Dutch Pictures. 

had a clear seven or eight hundred ; besides a store of silk 
gowns as stiff as boards and that rustled beautifully • white 
cambric handkerchiefs by the whole dozen ; a real diamond 
ring ; starched collars and bands by scores ; and better than 
all, the run of all his congregation's sympathies and houses,, 
which was worth I don't know how man^corncakes and cups of 
tea every day ; besides comforters, over-shoes, umbrellas, gold 
watches, silver teapots, self-acting coffee-biggins, and select 
libraries of theology, given or sent to him in the way of testi- 
monials in the course of the year, without end. Polks do 
say, too, that when Eeverend Etffus was in the ministiy 
down South, before he came to Punkington, he was even still 
richer in worldly goods, for that he owned something 
mentionable in niggers. But you know how folks will talk. 

Punkington is in Buff am county, Mass. There are a 
good many religions there. They don't quite hate each other; 
strive, speechify, write and talk against each other, as seems 
to be indispensable with orthodoxy and heterodoxy in Britain. 
Each religion gets along pretty well as it can : some grandly, 
some poorly, from Eeverend Bufus P. Pillsbury -with his chan- 
delier, stiff silk gown and diamond ring, down to Eeverend 
Lovejoy Snowdrop, who is quite black, and preaches to the 
coloured people (they can sing, some — coloured people can) 
down in a little crazy affair sot up with planks and sailcloth 
close to the wharf, and which is more like a wash-house than 
a chapel. 

It may be ten years ago that there was a religion in. 
rather a small way in Punkington, called the Grace-Walking 
Brethren. They had originally been called the Punkington 
Seceders; but, coalescing with Eeverend Pygrave Clapp — 



The Converjion of Colonel S^uagg. 139 

who had just sloped from Coonopolis, Ga., where he had had 
a slight difficulty with the citizens on the Ereesoil (whole 
ticket) question, which ended by his being ridden on 
a rail out of the state, and a report being spread abroad that 
the darkness of his complexion came from his having been 
tarred ; and that under his clothes he was feathered like a 
bird — coalescing with this persecuted Testifier, the amalga- 
mated ticket was thenceforward known as Grace- Walking. 
They encountered some little opposition at first. The Baal- 
Peor congregation (brass band connection) felt it incumbent 
upon them to denounce and repudiate the Grace-Walkers as 
Erastians, Ebionites, Arminians, Socinians, nigger-saviours, 
shoulder-hitters, money- diggers, and traders in shin-plaisters, 
Reverend Lysander Sphoon published a card in the Punking- 
ton Sphynx and Commercial Advertiser, in which he accused 
Reverend Barkley Baggs of the Grace-Walkers of whittling in 
the pulpit, chewing in the vestry, and having a bust of Tom 
Paine over his bookcase. Reverend B. B. retorted by another 
card in the Punkington Sibyl and North-and -South Buffum 
Oracle, in which he alluded to the well-known story of Reve- 
rend L. Sphoon having been in -early life in Sing-Sing peni- 
tentiary for picking up things on the wharf; adding some 
little anecdotes concerning what he had done subsequently in 
the wooden nutmeg trade, the clocks-that-wouldn't-figure 
trade, the school-teaching trade, the spirit-rapping trade, the 
tarred-oakum-imitation-India-rubber trade, the temperance 
lecturing trade, and the whiskey selling trade. He regretted 
that his sacerdotal character precluded him from cowhiding 
Reverend L. Sphoon the first time he met him in town ; but 
offered to match any one of his lay-elders against his oppo- 



140 Dutch Pictures. 

nent's deacons, and to forfeit fifty dolls, if the former left 
a strip of skin broader than a finger on the body of the 
latter after half-an-honr's "licking.'* 

This was the only feud of any consequence in which the 
Grace- Walking Brethren were concerned. They were peaceful, 
decent, harmless bodies enough, minding their own business, 
not interfering with that of anybody else, and our citizens 
took to them kindly. Their congregations soon began to 
multiply in number, and they had chapels at Marathon, 
Squashborough, Lower Whittle, Thermopylae, Jeffersonville, 
and East Halleluia. Within a year from their establishment 
they had five circuits within a fifty miles circle of Punkington. 

Now a circuit, you must understand, may comprehend 
five, ten, fifteen, twenty congregations ; and, the religion not 
being quite rich enough to entertain a minister for each 
separate congregation, there are so many circuits — religious 
" beats," in fact — each of which is assigned to a different 
clergyman, who goes the ronnd thereof in turn. Punkington 
circuit, including as it did the townships of Eggnogville, 
Bunkum, and Beersheba, together with Eapparoarer city and 
the villages of Snakesby, Eiseopolis, New Marseilles, Globbs, 
and Ephesus, was a very popular circuit indeed. There were 
always dreadful handsome girls at preachings and camp 
meetings, and plenty of comfortable farm-honses where the 
ministers were entertained with such delicacies in the way of 
pork fixings, mush, hominy, johnnycakes, canvas-backed 
ducks, pumpkin pies, squash, whitepot, curds, molasses, 
turkeys, hams, and apple pasties ; with elder wine, and per- 
haps a small drop of peach brandy or Monongahela whiskey, 
that would have brought water into the mouth of a London 



The Converjion of Colonel Quagg. 141 

alderman all cloyed and soggy from a tortoise dinner at 
Guildhall, or a proud British nobleman surfeited with the 
luxuries of a regal banquet at the court of St. James's. The 
country around Punkington was pretty and picturesome ; and 
the brethren walked in grace with meekness and devoutness. 
There was but one thing wanting to make the whole circuit 
one real land of milk and honey ; or, rather, there was one 
thing that turned it into a land of gall and wormwood — of 
soreness of flesh and bitterness of spirit ; and that thing was 
an individual ; and that individual was Colonel Quagg. 

A dreadful man, a skeery man, a man to waken snakes 
and rile monkies was Colonel Quagg. Goliah Washington 
Quagg was his name; and two and a half miles from Pun- 
kington did he locate, on the main road to Eapparoarer city. 
He was six foot three without his stockings, which would 
have made him, in jack-boots screeching tall to look at. He 
had a bushy beard and whiskers, and the integument that 
covered his bones was hard and horny as a crab-shell. The 
hair of his head was like a primeval forest, for it looked as 
though it had never been lopped, combed, weeded, or 
trimmed. His eyes were fearful to look. upon when they 
flashed, and they flashed almost always. He ate so much 
that people said he was hollow all through — legs, arms, and 
all — and packed his food from the feet upwards. Some 
people compared him to a locomotive, for he was always 
smoking, drinking, roaring, and coming into collision with 
other folks. He compared himself to a Mississippi steam- 
boat with the safety-valves tied down with rope-yarn. 
"Eosin me up, and stand on my boilers," he used to cry. 
" Give me goss and let me rip. Strangers pay your bills, and 



142 Dutch Pictures. 

liquor up once more before you die, for I must lick every 'coon 
of you or bust." He was always licking 'coons. He licked 
a backwoodsman ; four "Bowery bhoys" from New York, 
one after the otlier; an Irish hod-carrier (with one hand), 
and an English prize-fighter. They sot a giant out of a 
menagerie at him once, and the giant closed with him, and 
was heard, soon afterwards to crack like a nut. The giant 
said (after he was cracked), that it was a darned, tarnation, 
everlasting shame it was ; for he had gone in to whip a man., 
not a grisly bear. 

Colonel Quagg was a blacksmith. He was not by any 
means the sort of blacksmith that Professor Longfellow has 
described. He had no boys to sit in the church among, no 
little daughter to hear singing in the choir. He was not the 
sort of blacksmith / saw once, during my travels in Europe, 
in a little village in the south of Erance, and who, on a 
broiling July day, was hammering away at his anvil with 
might and main, — in his shirt, and with his hair in curl papers; 
for it was Sunday, and there was to be a fete in the village 
in the evening. No. Colonel Quagg was a very different 
kind of Mulciber : not a harmonious blacksmith or a learned 
blacksmith ; but a roaring, rampagious, coaly, knotty, sooty 
Vulcan of a man. To hear him shout out hoarsely to 'Zeek, 
his long, lank, bellows-blower : to see him whirl his tremen- 
dous hammer above his head as though it had been a feather, 
and bring it down upon the iron on his anvil with such a 
monstrous clang that the sparks flew about, and the flames 
leaped up the chimney and tripped up the heels of the smoke, 
as if they were frightened out of their wits. This was a 
sight — grand if you like — but fearful. 



The Converjion of Colonel §uagg. 143 

The colonelcy of Goliali Quagg arose from his command 
of the Eapparoarer Tigers. These redoubtable volunteers 
were (of course) the aegis of the Union, and the terror of 
Buffum County. On fourth of July day they fired off so 
many rounds of musketry that their eventually blowing them- 
selves up with gunpowder was thought to be by no means a 
matter of extreme improbability. The Eapparoarer Screamer 
newspaper teemed with cards headed " Eapparoarer Tigers, 
attention ! " and commanding the attendance of the corps at 
reviews, burials or weddings of members, or political meet- 
ings. Colonel Quagg, in his Tiger uniform, at the head of 
his corps, vowing vengeance against the Punkington National 
Guards, the Lower Whittle Fire Corps; the Squashborough 
Invincibles; the Bunkum Defenders; the East Halleluia 
Hussars (between which last-named volunteers and the 
Tigers there had occurred a deadly fray at the corners of 
Seventh Street and Slog Avenue, Punkington : the Hussars 
being at last obliged to take refuge in a liquor-store in the 
next block, and two eyes and unnumbered double teeth being 
left on the field) : Colonel Quagg brandishing his sabre and 
threatening gouging, cowhiding, and etarnal chawirig up to 
creation in general and rival militia and fire-corps in particu- 
lar, was a great and glorious sight to see once, perhaps twice, 
but not oftener; for the sun at noon- day dazzles, and 
distance lends enchantment to the voice of a powder maga- 
zine, or Vesuvius, or a mad dog. 

Colonel Quagg had neither wife nor relations, chick nor 
child. He lived behind the smithy, in a grim cabin ; where, 
for aught anybody knew he slept on the bones of his enemies, 
or kept bears and wolves, or burned brimstone and Bengal 



144 Dutch Pi&ures. 

lights in his stove. Where he was raised was not certain. 
What he did on Sundays (for he never went to church or 
meetings, and could not, in deference to our citizens, work in 
his smithy on the Sabbath) was not known. There were but 
two things about him on which arguments could be, with 
tolerable certainty, held. That he liked rum — raw— which 
he drank in vast quantities without ever winking, or being 
intoxicated; and that he hated the Grace-Walking Brethren. 
What these, or any other brethren had ever done to incur 
his dislike was not stated ; but it was clear and certain that 
he hated them fiercely and implacably. He declaimed against 
them in drinking bars ; he called them opprobrious names in 
the street; and, which was particularly disagreeable to the 
brethren themselves, he made a point of giving every minister 
who passed his smithy — on horse or on foot, on business or 
pleasure — a sound and particularly humiliating beating. 

Colonel Quagg's method was this. 'Zeek, the long, 
lanky assistant would, as he blew the bellows, keep a sharp 
look out through a little round hole in the smithy wall. 
When, on the crest of the little hill in the valley beneath 
which the smithy lay (the bridge over the Danube, leading to 
Punkington, was in the other direction), there appeared the 
devoted figure of a Grace- Walking clergyman, 'Zeek would 
call out, " one o' 'em, Colonel ! " Whereupon the black- 
smith would lay down his hammer, and say grimly, 'Zeek, 
'ile.'" 

The "ile," or oil, being brought, the Colonel would 
therewith anoint a tremendous leather strap, in size and 
appearance between the trace for a cart-horse and the lathe 
for a steam-engine. Then would he sally forth, tug the 



The Converfion of Colonel Quagg. 145 

luckless preacher by one leg off his horse — if he happened 
to be riding — or grapple him by the collar of his coat if 
he were a-foot, and thrash him with the strap — not till he 
howled for mercy; for the victim always did that at the 
very first stroke of the terrible leather; but till his own 
brawny arm could no longer hold the mighty weapon. All 
this was accompanied by a flood of abuse on the part of the 
Colonel : the minister, his congregation, sect, person, and 
presumed character, were all animadverted upon ; and, after 
• having been treated with brutality, he w r as dismissed with 
scorn, with a sardonic recommendation to send as many more 
of his brethren that way as he could, to be served in the 
same way. Then, execution being done, and the miserable 
victim of his ferocity gone on his bruised way towards 
Punkington, the Colonel would stride into Silas B. Powkey's 
tavern over the hill, hot, perspiring, and fatigued; and, 
throwing his strap on the bar, and seating himself on a 
puncheon, would throw his legs aloft, half in weariness half 
in triumph, even till they reached the altitude of the mantel- 
piece ; would there rest them ; and, ejecting a mighty stream 
of tobacco juice, cry : 

" Squire, strapped another Grace- Walker : Rum." 
Now this, as in the celebrated Prog and Boy ease (vide 
spelling-book reports), albeit excellent sport to one party , 
concerned, was death to the other. Martyrdom had not 
exactly been contracted for when the Grace-Walking Brethren 
entered the ministry ; and without martyrdom there was no 
riding the Punkington circuit. There was no avoiding the' 
colonel and his awful strap. There was no going round 
another way. There was no mollifying, persuading, or infus- 

L 



146 Dutch Pictures. 

ing soft pity into the colonel's breast. "I licks ye," he was 
wont to reply when interceded with, "because I kin, and 
because I like, and because ye'se critters that licks is good 
for. Skins ye have on and skins I'll have off ; hard or soft, 
wet or dry, spring or fall. Walk in grace if ye like till 
pumpkins is peaches; but licked ye must be till your toe- 
nails drop off and your noses bleed blue ink." And licked 
they were accordingly. 

What was to be done with such a man — a man with this 
dreadful fixed idea of strapping clergymen — a man with an 
indomitable will, a strong arm, and an abusive tongue. 
Warrants, summonses, exigents, and actions for battery, the 
colonel laughed to scorn. "As much law as you like," he 
said, "but not one lick will that save you." The female 
members of the Grace-Walking congregation were fain to 
write anonymous letters to him, exhorting him to repentance. 
Reverend Joash M'Tear wrote to Lucretia Z. Tackeboguey of 
Grimgribberopelis, Va., the celebrated table-turner and spirit- 
rapper, and begged her to consult a four-legged mahogany of 
extraordinary talent and penetration with reference to Colonel 
Quagg's persecution of the saints. He received in reply a 
highly-flattering and interesting communication from the 
spirits of Cleopatra and Johanna Southcote, in which it was 
confidently predicted that shortly after the passing of the 
Maine liquor law in Holland, and the adoption of Bloomerism 
at the British court, Colonel Quagg would be bound in 
leathern straps for five hundred years : which, all things 
taken into consideration, was not a very encouraging look- 
out for the Grace- Walkers. Then they took to holding- 
public meetings, mass meetings, indignation meetings, against 



The Converfion of Colonel ^uagg. 147 

him ; then to praying for him ; then to praying to be de- 
livered from him as from a serpent or fiery dragon. One 
bright spirit of the sect suggested bribery, either directly, by the 
enclosure of dollar-notes, or indirectly, by the encouragement 
of the colonel's trade in having horses shod at his smithy. 
But both artifices failed. The colonel took the first ten- 
dollar bill that was offered him, and administered a more 
unmerciful thrashing than ordinary to the giver — as a receipt, 
he said. The next victim happened to have a horse that 
opportunely cast both his fore-shoes in front of the colonel's 
residence. The enemy of Grace-Walkers shod the beast; 
but the only benefit that its proprietor derived from giving 
Quagg his custom was the privilege of being strapped inside 
the smithy instead of out of it, and the threat that the next 
time he presumed to come that way he should be laid on the 
anvil and beaten as flat as a wheel-tire with a red-hot crowbar. 
This state of things was growing intolerable. The more 
the brethren went on preaching the more the colonel went on 
licking. The more they beat the — 

" Pulpit drum ecclesiastic 
With fist instead of a stick," 

the more Colonel Quagg proved his doctrine orthodox — 

" By apostolic blows and knocks." 

The Punkington circuit began to lack ministers. Clergy- 
men were not forthcoming. The pulpits were deserted. The 
congregations began to cry out. No wonder. Devotion, 
meekness, self-abnegation are all admirable qualities in their 
way, but human nature, after all, is not cast iron. It will , 
wrestle with wild beasts at Ephesus, but it does not exactly 

L 2 



H8 Dutch Pictures. 

love to wrestle when the wild beasts are twisting the bars of 
their cage, and have not had a shin-bone to feed on for three 
weeks. To put one's head into the lion's month is good 
once in a way ; but it is hardly prudent to do so when the 
lion's tail begins to wag, and his mane to bristle, and his 
eyes to flash fire and fury. 

There was a meeting held at Punkington to decide upon 
what ministers should go the ensuing Spring circuit ; just as, 
in Europe, the Judges meet to arrange among themselves 
who shall go a-hanging, and where. The question of Colonel 
Gluagg was debated in solemn conclave : for, though all the 
other places in the circuit found ready volunteers, not one 
clergyman could be found to offer to adminster to the 
spiritual necessities of the Eapparoarer brethren. Brother 
M'Tear had a bad cold; brother Brownjohn would rather 
not ; brother Knash had a powerful call down Weepingwail 
way ; brother Bobberlink would next time — perhaps. 
Brother Slocum gave a more decided reason than any one of 
his brother ministers. He said that he would be etarnally 
licked if he'd go, because he'd be sure to be considerably 
licked if he went. 

A brother who, up to that time, had said little or nothing 
— a long, thin, loose-limbered brother, with a face very like a 
quince more than three parts withered — who sat in the corner 
of the room during the debate, with his legs curled up very 
much in the fashion of a dog : — a brother, to say the truth, 
of whose abilities a somewhat mean opinion was entertained, 
for he was given to stammering, blushing, hemming, hawing, 
scraping with his feet, and seemed to possess no peculiar 
accomplishment save the questionable one of shutting one 



The Converfion of Colonel Quagg. 149 

eye when he expectorated — this brother, by name Zephaniah 
Sockdolloger, here addressed himself modestly to speech : — ■ 
"Thorns," he said, " is'nt good eating ; stinging-nettles 
isn't pleasant handling, without gloves; nor is thistles 
comfortable, worn next to the skin. Corns is painful. Man's 
skin was not made to be flayed off him like unto the hide of a 
wild cat. But vocation is vocation, and dooty, dooty — some. 
I, Zephaniah Sockdolloger, will go on the Happaroarer loca- 
tion, and if Brother Brownjohn will lone me his hoss I will 
confront the man — even Goliah Quagg." After which the 
devoted brother shut one eye and expectorated. 

The meeting turned their quids and expectorated too ; 
but without shutting their eyes. They adopted the long 
brother's disinterested proposition, nem. con. But Brother 
Bobberlink whispered to Brother Slocura that he had allers 
thought Zephaniah Sockdolloger considerable of a fool, and 
that now he know'd it — that was a fact. 

The fire roared, the sparks flew up the chimney, and the 
bellows blew fiercely one April evening ; and Colonel Quagg 
and his anvil were in fierce dispute about a red hot horseshoe. 
The Colonel had the advantage of a hammer that Tubal Cain 
might have wielded when he fashioned the first ploughshare ; 
but the anvil was used to hard knocks, and stood out against 
the blacksmith bravely. Indeed, if a certain metallic vibra- 
tion was to be taken into account, the anvil had the best of it; 
for it had the last word. Only the unfortunate horseshoe 
came to grief ; and, like the man between two stools who 
came to the ground, was battered into all sorts of shapes 
between the two disputants. Suddenly, 'Zeek, the bellows- 
blower, ceased for a moment in his occupation, and remarked : 



150 Dutch Pictures. 

" One '0 them, colonel, top o' the hill. On a hoss„. 
Legs as long as a coulter." 

" Twankeydillo ! twankeydillo ! " * sung out Colonel 
Quagg in great exultation. " He, 'Zeek, and plenty of it for 
Jack Strap, the crittur, is getting tarnation rusty." 

The fatal strap being " iled " rather more liberally than 
usual, the colonel grasped it in his mighty hand, and passed 
out of the smithy door. 

He saw, coming towards him down the hill, a long-legged, 
yellow-faced man in -black, with a white neckcloth and a 
broad brimmed hat. He bestrode a solemn-looking, white 
horse with a long tail. He had but one spur (the rider) but 
it was a very long and rusty spur. In his hand he carried a 
little dog's-eared book ; but, as he rode, he sung quite softly 
a little hymn that ran something like unto the following : — 

" We are marching through the gracious ground, 
We soon shall hear the trumpet sound ; 
And then we shall in glory reign, 
And never, never, part again. 

What, never part again ? 

No, never part again. 

No never, never, never, &c. 
And then we shall, &c." 

Colonel Quag'g waited till the verse of the hymn was quite 
finished, and the horseman had got to within a couple of 
yards of his door, when he called out in a terrible voice, 

"Hold hard!" 

"Brother," said the man on the horse, "good evening 
and peace." 

* Twankeydillo is the burden of an old country blacksmith's song. 



The Converjion of Colonel 9%uagg. 151 

"For the matter of that," responded Colonel Quagg, 
" rot ! Hold hard, and git out of that hoss." 

" Brother ? " the other interrogated, as if not quite under- 
standing the command. 

" Git out, I tell you," cried the blacksmith. " Legs and 
feet. Git out, you long-tailed blackbird. Git out, for I'm 
riz, and snakes will wake ! I want to talk to you." 

The long man slid rather than got off his horse. It was 
indeed, Brother Zephaniah Slockdolloger ; for his face was 
quincier than ever, and, as he descended from his steed, he 
shut one eye and expectorated. 

" Now," said the blacksmith, seating himself on the 
horse block in front of his dwelling, and giving a blow on 
the ground with «his strap that made the pebbles dance. 
" Where do you hail from ? " 

" From Punkington city, brother," answered the reverend 
Zephaniah. 

" And whar are you a goin' tu? " 

" To Rapparoarer city." 

" And what may you be goin' for to du in that loca- 
tion?" • 

" Goin' on circuit." 

« What ? " 

" Lord's business, brother." 

Colonel Quagg shook out the strap to its full length, and 
passed it through his horny hand. 

"There was a brother of yours," he said sententiously, 
" that went to Rapparoarer city on Lord's business last fall. 
He passed this edifice he did. He met this strap close by 
here. And this strap made him see comets, and dance like a 



152 Dutch Pictures. 

shaking Quaker, and feel uncommon like a bob-tailed bull in 
fly-time." 

There was something so dreadfully suggestive in the 
position of a bob-tailed bull in fly-time (the insects fre- 
quently kill cattle with their stings) that brother Sockdollo- 
ger wriggled uneasily. 

" And I du hope," the colonel continued, " that you, 
brother, aren't of the same religion as this babe of grace was 
as met the strap as he was riding. That religion was the 
Grace-Walking religion, and that religion I always lick." 

" Lick brother ? " 

" Lick. With the strap. Dreadful." 

" Colonel Goliah Gluagg," said the minister, " for such, I 
know, is your name in the flesh, I am*a preacher of the 
Grace- Walking connection. Humble, but faithful, I hope." 

"Then," returned Colonel Quagg, making an ironical 
bow, " this is the strap with which I am going to lick you 
into sarse." 

" Brother, brother," the other cried, shaking his head, 
cc cast that cruel strap from out of thine hand. Close thine 
hand, if thou wilt, upon the hammer of thy trade, the coul- 
ter of thy plough, upon a pen, the rudder of a ship, the 
handle of a lantern to light men to peace and love and good- 
will ; but close it not upon sword of iron, or bludgeon of 
wood, or strap of leathern hide. For, from the uplifting and 
downfalling of those wicked instruments came never good ; 
but rather boiling tears, and bruises and blood, and misery, 
and death." 

" Now look you here," the blacksmith cried, impatiently. 
" Talk as long as you like j but talk while I am a-licking of 



The Converfion of Colonel ^uagg. 153 

you. For time is precious, aud must not be thrown away 
nohow. Lick you I must, and lick you I will. Hard." 

" But, brother — but, colonel " 

" Eot ! " exclaimed the colonel. " Straps is waiting. 
Stubs and fences ! I'll knock you into horseshoes and then 
into horsenails, if you keep me waiting." 

" Have you no merciful feelings ? " asked Zephaniah, as 
if sorely troubled. 

" Not a cent of 'em ' Air you ready ! Will you take 
it fighting, or will you take it lying down ! Some takes it 
fighting ; some takes it like lambs, lying down. Only make 
haste." 

" Goliah Quagg," the minister responded, " I am a man 
of peace, and not one that goes about raging with sword and 
buckler, like unto Apollyon, or a corporal of the Boston 
Tigers ; and I would rather not take it at all." 

" You must," the colonel roared, now fairly infuriated. 
" Pickled alligators ! you must. Hold hard, you coon ! 
Hold hard ! for I'm a goin' to begin. Now, once more ; is 
it fighting, or is it quiet, you mean for to take it ? " 

" Well," said brother Zephaniah, " you are hard upon 
me, Colonel, and that's true. It's fighting or lying down 
is'nt it ? " 

"Aye," returned the colonel, brandishing his strap. 

" Then I'll take it fighting" the man of peace said quietly. 

Colonel Quagg halted for a moment, as if amazed at the 
audacity of the Grace-Walker. Then, with a wild halloo, he 
rushed upon him very much as a bob-tailed bull does rush 
about under the aggravating influence of flies. His hand 
was upon the minister's collar j the strap that had done so 



154 Dutch Pictures. 

much execution in its time was swinging high in the air,, 
when — 

Stay. Can you imagine the rage, astonishment, and des- 
pair of a schoolmaster caned by his pupil; of the Emperor 
of China sentenced to be bambooed by a Hong Kong coolie; 
of the beadle of the Burlington Arcade expulsed therefrom 
by a boy with a basket : of a butler kicked by a footpage ; 
of a Southern planter cowhided by one of his own niggers ; 
of a Broadway dandy jostled by a newly landed Irish emi- 
grant; of a policeman ordered to move on by an apple- 
woman ; of the Commander-in-chief of the army desired to 
stand at ease by a drummer ; of the Pope of Bome blessed 
with two fingers by a chorister boy ? If you can imagine 
anything of that sort, — but only if you can, — you may be 
able to form some idea of how Colonel Quagg felt when a 
storm of blows, hard, well-directed, and incessant, began to 
fall on his head, on his breast, on his face, on his shoulders, 
on his arms, on his legs — all over his body, so rapidly that he 
felt as if he was being hit everywhere at once, — when he 
found his strap would hit nowhere on the body of his op- 
ponent, but that he himself was hit everywhere. 

Sledgehammers ! Sledgehammers were nothing to the 
fists of the Grace-Walking brother. A bob-tailed bull in fly 
time was an animal to be envied in comparison to the colonel. 
He danced with all the vigour of a nigger toeing and healing 
a hornpipe. He saw more comets than Tycho Brahe or Erra 
Pater ever dreamed of. He felt that he was all nose, and 
that a horribly swollen one. Then that he had swallowed all 
his teeth. Then that he had five hundred eyes, and then 
none at all. Then that his ribs went in and his blood came 



The Converjion of Colonel Quagg. 155 

out. Then his legs failed under him, and he fell down all of 
a heap ; or perhaps, to speak classically and pugilistically, he 
hit out wildly, felt groggy, and went down at the ropes. The 
tall brother went down atop of him, and continued pounding 
away at his body — not perhaps as hard as he could, but 
decidedly much harder than the colonel liked — singing all 
the while the little hymn beginning 

" We are marching through the gracious ground." 
quite softly to himself. 

" Hold hard ! " gasped the colonel at last, faintly. " You 
don't mean murder, do you ? You won't hit a man when 
he's down, much more, will you, brother ? " 

" By no means," answered Zephaniah, bringing down his 
fist nevertheless with a tremendous " bash" upon the colo- 
nel's nose, as if there were a fly there, and he wanted to kill 
it. " But you've took it lighting, colonel, and you may as 
well now take it like a lamb, lying down." 

" But I'm broke, I tell you,'" groaned the vanquished 
"blacksmith. " I can't do no more. You air so mighty hard, 
you are" 

" Oh ! you give in, then ? " 

"Aye," murmured Colonel Quagg, " I cave in." 

" Speak louder, I'm hard of hearing." 

" Yes ! " repeated the colonel, with a groan. " I du cave 
in. For I'm beat ; whittled clean away to the small end o' 
nothing — chawed up — cornered." 

"You must promise me one little thing, Colonel Goliah 
Quagg," said the reverend Sockdolloger, without however 
removing his knees from the colonel's chest. " You must 
promise before I leave off hammering of your body, never 



156 Dutch PiBures. 

for to ill-tfeat by word or deed any of our people — ministers, 
elders, deacons, or brethren." 

"I'll promise," replied the colonel; "only let me up. 
You're choking me." 

" Not to rile, lick, or molest any other peaceable critturs 
as are coming or going past your wayupou Lord's busi- 
ness." 

" I promise," muttered the colonel who was now be- 
coming purple in the face. 

"Likewise," concluded Zephaniah, playfully knocking 
away one of his adversary's loose teeth, so as to make his 
mouth neat and tidy, "you must promise to give up drinking 
of rum ; which is a delusion and a snare, and bad for the in- 
nards, besides being on the trunk-line to perdition. And 
finally, you must promise to come to our next camp meeting, 
clean shaved, and with a contrite heart." 

" No," cried the almost-expiring colonel, " I won't, not 
for all the tbebacco in Yirginny ! Nor yet for Martin Van 
Buren, or Dan'el Webster ! Nor yet for to be postmaster ! " 

" You won't, brother ? " asked Zephaniah, persuasively 
raising his fist. 

" No, I'm darned if I do." 

" Then," said the Grace-Walker, meekly, " I must sing 
you another little hymn." 

Immediately afterwards Colonel Quagg's tortures 
recommenced. He struggled, he roared, he entreated, but 
in vain. All he could see were the long man's arms whirling 
about like the sails of windmills. All he could feel was the 
deadly pain of the blows on his already hideously bruised face 
and body. All he could hear was the snuffling voice of his 



The Converf on of Colonel ^uagg. *57 

tormentor singing, with an occasional stammer, a verse of a 
little hymn, commencing 

"I'm going home to bliss above — 

"Will you go, will you go ? 
To live in mercy, peace, and love — 

"Will you go, will you go ? 
My old companions fare you well, 
A brighter fate has me befel, 
I mean up in the skies to dwell, 

"Will you go, will you go ?" 

He could stand it no longer. He threw out his arms, and 
groaned, " Spare my life, and I'll promise anything." 

"Happy to hear it, colonel," answered brother Sockdolloger, 
helping his adversary to rise, and then coolly settling his own 
white neckcloth and broadbrimmed hat. " Perhaps you'll be 
good enough to look after my hoss a bit. He cast a shoe just 
after I left Punkington." 

Colonel Quagg, quite humiliated and crestfallen, proceeded 
to shoe the horse, which had been quietly cropping the stunted 
herbage while the colonel was being licked. The operation 
finished, as well as Quagg's bruised arms would permit, the 
Grace-Walker gravely handed him a coin, which the black- 
smith as gravely took ; then mounted his steed, and rode 
away. As for 'Zeek he had been hiding away somewhere 
during the combat. But he now appeared ; and, to judge by 
the energetic manner in which he blew the bellows, and 
a certain grin overspreading his swarthy countenance, he 
seemed not altogether displeased at the discomfiture of his 
master. 

Colonel Quagg had never read Shakespeare, but he had 



J 5 8 Dutch Pictures. 

unconsciously acted the part of Ancient Pistol. He had 
been compelled to eat the leek which he had mocked. He 
had been a woodmonger, and bought nothing of brother 
Sockdolloger but cudgels. He had taken a groat, too, to 
heal his pate. Let us hope, with Eluellen, that it was good 
for his wounded sconce. 

There is a seat at religious camp meetings in America 
called the " anxious seat." A camp meeting is not unlike a 
fair — a very pious one, of course; and the anxious seat is 
one on which sit the neophytes, or newly-entered — those who 
have anything to confess, anything to complain of, anything 
io disclose, or to tell, or to ask. 

Upon the anxious seat at the next camp meeting near 
Eapparoarer city of the Grace-Walking Brethren sat Colonel 
Goliah Quagg. Amid a breathless silence, he frankly avowed 
his former evil course of life, narrated the events of his 
conversion by brother Sockdolloger, and promised amendment 
for the future. A brother, who had been reposing on a bench, 
with his limbs curled up after the manner of a dog — a long, 
yellow-faced, brother, who had a curious habit of shutting one 
eye when he expectorated — rose to speak when the colonel 
sat down. He expressed how happy he was to have been the 
instrument of Colonel Quagg's conversion, and that the means 
he had employed, though somewhat rough, had been effectual. 
With much modesty, also, he alluded to his own conversion. 
It was not such a long time ago, he said, that he himself had 
been but as one of the wicked. He owned it with shame that 
he had at one time been one of the abandoned men called 
prizefighters — a pugilist to be backed and betted on for hire 
and gain : and that he had beaten Dan Gxummles, surnamed 



The Converjion of Colonel Quagg. x 59 

the Brooklyn Pet, in a stand up fight for two hundred dolls: 
a side. 

Colonel Quagg has kept his promise. He left off mm 
and parson licking. He resigned the command of the Tigers, 
and is now, as Elder Quagg, one of the burning and shining 
lights among the Grace- Walking Brethren. 




XI. 



DEMETEIUS THE DIVER. 



THERE are no bygones that have greater need to be by- 
gones than those of wickedness, violence, and cruelty. 
The blood and dust that besmear some pages of history 
might glue the leaves together for ever. Yet from time to 
time necessities will occur that leave us no choice but to 
open the old grave; to turn to the old dark register; to 
unlock the old dark, grim skeleton closet ; to turn the retro- 
spective glass towards the bad, bold days that are gone. 

We are at present the allies* — and worthily so — of the 
Turks. A brave people, patient, high-minded, slow to anger, 
terrible yet magnanimous in their wrath. Yet, while we ac- 
knowledge and respect all the good qualities possessed by 
this valiant nation, it is impossible to forget that the Turk 
has not always been the complacent Pacha in an European 
frock-coat and a sealing-wax cap with a blue tassel, who 
writes sensible, straightforward state papers, reviews Euro- 
pean troops, does not object to a quiet glass of champagne, 
and regales English newspaper correspondents with coffee, 
and pipes. Nor is he always the sententious, phlegmatic, 
* 1854. 



Demetrius the Diver. 161 

taciturn, apathetic Osmanli, who, shawled and turbaned, sits 
cross-legged upon the divan of meditation, smoking the pipe 
of reflection; who counts his beads and says his prayers five 
times a-day, and enjoys his kef ; and who, as to wars and 
rumours of wars, fire, famine, pestilence, and slaughter, says 
but : "Allah akbar " — God is great. 

There are men in London whom we may meet and con- 
verse with in our daily walks, who can remember the horrible 
massacre of Scio, in the year eighteen hundred and twenty- 
two. We had just begun then, through the edifying cobweb- 
spinning of diplomacy, the passionate poetry of Lord Byron 
and the crude intelligence of the English press, to under- 
stand that there was something on hand between the Greeks 
and the Turks in the Morea and the Archipelago, and that 
the former were not, on the whole, quite rightly used. We 
were just going to see about forming an opinion on these and 
other matters when the news of the massacre of Scio burst 
upon us like a thunder-clap. Gloomily and succinctly the 
frightful news was told us how the terrible Kara Ali — or the 
Black — Pacha had appeared with a fleet and an army in 
the harbour of Scio, then one of the fairest, peacefulest, most 
prosperous, most densely-populated islands in the Graeco- 
Turkish Archipelago, and that all and everything — peaceful 
rayahs, gold and purple harvest, university, commerce, wealth 
— had in three days disappeared. The story of the massacre 
of Scio has never been fully told in England ; and only in so 
far as it effects my story am I called upon to advert to it 
here. Besides, no tongue could tell, no pen could describe, 
in household language, a tithe of the atrocities perpetrated 
in the defenceless island by order of the Black Pacha. Suffice 

M 



1 62 Dutch Pi&ures. 

it to say that for three days Scio was drenched in blood ; that 
the dwellings of the European consuls were no asylums ; that 
the swords of the infuriated Osrnanlis murdered alike the 
whiteheaded patriarch, the priest of the family, the nursing 
mother, the bride of yesterday, the bride of that to-morrow 
which was never to come to her, the tender suckling, and the 
child that was unborn. Upwards of eighteen thousands per- 
sons were massacred in cold blood ; and the blackened ruins 
of Scio became a habitation for bats and dragons, howling 
dogs, and wheeling birds of prey. 

Some few miserable souls escaped the vengeance of the 
Black Pacha. There was a Greek ecclesiastic lately in London, 
who was hidden by his mother in a cave during the massacre, 
and brought away unhurt. When the fury of the invaders 
began, through lassitude, to cool, they selected such boys and 
voun°' girls as they could find alive, and sent them to be 
sold in the slave market at Constantinople. Then, when they 
had left the wretched island to itself, half-famished wretches 
beo-an to crawl out of holes and thickets and ditches, where 
they had hidden themselves. They saw the charred and 
smouldering remnants of what had once been Scio ; but they 
abode not by them. In an agony of fear lest the murderers 
should return, they made the best of their way across the 
seas to other islands, or to inaccessible haunts on the main- 
land. Those who had the means took refuge on the French 
and Italian shores of the Mediterranean. 

There is a sultry city which, if you were minded to go to 
it overland, you could have reached in those days by dili- 
gence, as you can reach it in these, by a commodious railway 
from Paris; but, to attain which by sea you must cross the 



Demetrius the Diver. 163 

stormy Bay of Biscay and pass the rocky straits of Gibraltar, 
and coast along the tideless sea almost in sight of the shores 
of Africa. To this great mart of southern commerce, with its . 
deep blue sky, its slackbaked houses, its Cannebiere, its orange 
groves, its black-eyed, brown-skinned children, its Quai de la 
Joliette, and crowded port, where floats the strangest medley 
of ships, and on tlie wharves of which walk the most aston- 
ishing variety of costumes that ever you saw — to the city of 
Marseilles in France, came many of these refugee Greeks, 
some from Scio, some from the Morea, tome from Candia, 
many from the Fanal or Fanar of Constantinople — which 
had also had its massacre — some from the interior of Bulgaria 
and Eoumelia. There were Greek gentlemen with their 
families who could never congratulate themselves sufficiently 
on having saved their heads and their piastres ; there were 
merchants quite stripped and bankrupt, who nevertheless, in 
the true Grecian manner began afresh, trading and making 
money with admirable assiduity and perseverance. And 
above all there were poor rayahs, who had been caikjees, 
coffee-house waiters, portefaix, at home — who had lost their 
little all, and had nothing but their manual labour to depend 
upon, aud who were glad to carry burdens, and run messages, 
and help to load and unload the ships in the port of Mar- 
seilles. 

Among these, was one Demetrius or Dmitri Omeros. No- 
body knew much about him, save that he was a Sciote, and 
had escaped after the massacre ; that he was quite alone, and 
very poor. He was fortunate enough to possess a somewhat 
rare accomplishment, which made his earnings although pre- 
carious, considerably more remunerative than those of his 

M 2 



164 Dutch Pictures. 

fellow-countrymen occupying the station to which he ap- 
peared to belong'. Demetrius was a most expert swimmer 
and diver. Had Demetrius Omeros lived in our days he 
would have been a Professor to a certainty ; the walls 
would have been covered with posting bills and woodcuts 
pourtraying his achievements ; and he would have had a con- 
venient exhibition-room, and a sliding-scale of prices for his 
Entertainment. In eighteen twenty-three he contented him- 
self with the exhibition of his talents in the open port of 
Marseilles, and wai satisfied with the stray francs, half-francs, 
copper sous, and liards, flung to him when he emerged from 
the water, ail soaked and dripping, like a Newfoundland dog. 
He thus managed to lead a sufficiently easy, lounging, idle 
life ; splashing, swimming, and diving sometimes for sheer 
amusement ; at others, basking in the genial sun with such 
profound indolence that had you not known him to be a 
Sciote you would have taken him for a genuine lazzarone of 
the Quai Santa Lucia. Demetrius was some thirty years old, 
tall, magnificently proportioned, with a bronzed countenance, 
wavy black hair, and sparkling black eyes. His attire was 
exceedingly simple, being ordinarily limited to a shirt, red 
and white striped trowsers secured round the waist by a 
silken sash, and a small Greek tarbouch on his head, orna- 
mented with a tarnished gold tassel. Shoes and stockings he 
despised as effeminate luxuries. He was perfectly contented 
with his modest fare of grapes, melons, brown bread, garlic,, 
and sour wine. House rent cost him nothing, as one of the 
Greek merchants settled at Marseilles allowed him to sleep 
in his warehouse, as a species of watch-dog. When the 
weather was fine, he &wam and dived and dried himself in 



Demetrius the Diver. 165 

the sun : when it was foul, he coiled himself into a ball and 
went to sleep. 

In the year eighteen hundred and twenty-four it occurred 
to the Turkish government considerably to strengthen its 
navy. There was an arsenal and dockyard at Constantinople 
then, as there is now ; but the Ottomans did not know much 
about ship-building, and in the absence of any material 
guarantee for the safety of their heads, European artizans 
were rather chary of enlisting in the service of the Padishah. 
So, as the shipwrights would'nt go to Sultan Mahmoud, 
Sultan Mahmoud condescended to go to the shipwrights; 
that is to say he sent an Effendi attached to the department 
of Marine, to Marseilles, with full powers to cause to be 
constructed four frigates by the shipbuilders of that port. 
As the Erench government had not then begun to interest 
itself openly one way or other in the Eastern question, and as 
the shipbuilders of Marseilles did not care one copper cent 
whether the Turks beat the Greeks or the Greeks the Turks, 
and, more than all this, as the Effendi from Stamboul had 
carte-blancJie in the monetary department, and paid for each 
frigate in advance, the Marseillais set about building the four 
frigate with a hearty good will, and by the spring of eighteen 
hundred and twenty-five, two of them were ready for launching. 

It was observed by the Erench workmen that Demetrius 
the Diver appeared to take very great interest in the process 
of shipbuilding. Day after day he would come into the slip 
where the frigates were being constructed, and, sitting upon 
a pile of planks, would remain there for hours. Other Greeks 
would come occasionally, and launch forth into fierce invec- 
tives against the Turks, and against the Erench too, for 



1 66 Dutch Pictures. 

lending* their hand for the fabrication of ships which were to 
be employed by infidels against Christians. In these tirades 
Demetrius the Diver seldom, if ever, joined. He was a man 
of few words, and he sat upon the planks, and looked at the 
workmen, their tools, and their work. Nobody took much 
notice of him, except to throw him a few sous occasionally, 
or to say what a lazy, skulking fellow he was. 

At length the day arrived which was fixed for the launch 
of the first frigate, the " Sultani Bahri." Half Marseilles 
was present. The sub-prefect was there — not officially, but 
officiously (whatever that subtle distinction may be). Crowds 
of beautiful ladies, as beautifully dressed, were on the raised 
seats fitted round the sides of the slip ; the " Sultana Bahri " 
was dressed out with flags, and aboard her were the great 
Effendi himself, with his secretary, his interpreter, his pipe- 
bearer, and the shipbuilder. 

The sight of a ship-launch is to the full as exciting as 
any race. The heart beats time to the clinking of the ham- 
mers that are knocking the last impediments away, and when 
the mighty mass begins to move, the spectator is in a tremour 
of doubt, and hope, and fear. When the ship rights herself, 
and indeed walks the waters like a thing of life, the excite- 
ment is tremendous. He who sees the gallant sight must shout, 
he must congratulate himself, his nex't neighbour, — every- 
body in short, upon the successful completion of the Work. 

Now, everything had been looked to, thought of, prepared 
for the triumphant launch of the w Sultani Bahri." The only 
obstacles between her and the waters were certain pieces of 
wood technically called in England (I know not what their 
French name may be) " dogshores," and these were being 



Demetrius the Diver. 167 

knocked away by the master shipwright. This operation, I 
may remark, was formerly considered so dangerous that in the 
royal dockyards it was undertaken by convicts, who obtained 
their liberty if they accomplished the task without accident. 
Just as. the first stroke of the hammer became audible, Deme- 
trius the Diver, who had hitherto been concealed among the 
crowd, plunged into the water, and swam right across the 
track that the frigate would probably take on her release from 
the slip. A cry of horror burst from the crowd as he swam 
directly towards the ship's stem : for the vessel had begun to 
move, and every one expected the rash diver to be crushed or 
drowned. But, when he was within a few feet of the frigate, 
Demetrius the Diver threw up his arras, held them aloft for a 
moment in a menacing manner, then quietly subsided on to 
his back, and floated away. The " Sultani Bahri" slid down 
her ways to a considerable extent, she was even partially 
in the water ; but she walked it by no means like a thing 
of life, for her stern began to settle down, and, if the truth 
must be told, the new frigate of his Imperial Highness the 
Sultan — stuck in the mud ! 

They tried to screw her off, to weight her off, to float her 
off, but in vain, When a ship sticks in launching, there is 
frequently no resource but to pull her to pieces where she 
sticks, and this seemed to be the most probable fate in store 
for the " Sultani Bahri." The Effendi was in a fury. The ship- 
builder was " desolated ;" but the Frenchman only ascribed 
the misadventure to the clumsiness of his launching-hands, 
whereas the Moslem, superstitious like the majority of his co- 
religionists, vowed that the .failure was solely owing to the 
evil eye of the Giaour diver, Demetrius Omeros. Had the 



1 68 Dutch Pi&ures. 

Effandi been in his own land, a very short and summary pro- 
cess would have preserved all future ship-launches from the 
troublesome presence of Demetrius Omeros and his evil eye; 
but at Marseilles, in the department of the Bouches du Rhone, 
the -decapitation, bowstringing, or drowning, of even a rayah, 
was not to be thought of. So, the Effendi was obliged to be 
satisfied with giving the strictest orders for Demetrius's ex- 
clusion from the shipbuilder's yard in future; and after a 
delay of some months, the second frigate (the first was rotting 
in the mud) was ready for launching. 

Anxiety was depicted on the Effendi's face as he broke a 
bottle of sherbet over the bows of the frigate and named her 
the " Achmedie." Immediately afterwards a cry burst from 
the crowd of " Demetrius ! Demetrius the Diver ! " and, 
rushing along the platform which ran round the vessel, the 
Effendi could descry the accursed diver holding up his arms 
as before, and doubtless blighting the onward progress of the 
" Achmedie " with his evil eye. 

Evil or not, a precisely similar disaster overtook the second 
frigate, and the launch was a lamentable failure. The ship- 
builder was in despair. The Effendi went home to his hotel, 
cursing, and was about administering the bastinado to his 
whole household as a relief to his feelings, when his inter- 
preter, a shrewd Greek, one Tanni, ventured to pour the balm 
of advice into the ear of indignation. 

sc Effendi,*' he said, " this rayah who dives is doubtless a 
cunning man, a magician, and by his spells and incantations 
has arrested the ships of my lord the Padishah, whom Allah 
preserve, in their progress ! But he is a rayah and a Greek, 
and a rogue of course. Let my lord the Effendi bribe him, 
and he will remove his spells.'' 



Demetrius the Diver. 169 

"You are all dogs, and sons of dogs/' answered the 
Effendi, graciously, "but out of your mouth devoted to the 
slipper, Yanni, conies much wisdom. Send for this issue 
of a mangy pig, this diver with the evil eye." 

Demetrius was sent for, and ia due time made his appear- 
ance, not so much as salaaming to the Effendi, or even remov- 
ing his cap. The envoy of the Sultan was sorely tempted to 
begin the interview by addressing himself through the inter- 
mediary of a bamboo to the soles of the diver's feet ; but, 
fear of the sub-prefect and his gendarmes, and, indeed, of the 
magical powers of the diver himself, prevented him. 

"Dog and slave!" said he, politely, "dog, that would 
eat garbage out of the shop of a Jew butcher, wherefore hast 
thou bewitched the ships of our lord and Caliph the Sultan 
Mahmoud ? " 

"I am not come here to swallow dirt," answered the 
diver, coolly, "and if your words are for dogs, open the win- 
dow and throw them out. If you want anything with, a 
man who, in Frangistan, is as good as a Bey Oglou, state 
your wishes." 

" The ships, slave, the ships ! " 

" The first two stuck in the mud," said the Greek ; " and 
the third, with the blessing of Heaven and St. George of Cap- 
padocia, will no more float than a cannon-ball ! " 

" You lie, you dog, you lie ! " said the Effendi. 

f "Tis you who lie, Effendi," answered Demetrius the 
Diver ; " and, moreover, if you give me the lie again — by St. 
Luke I will break your unbelieving jaw." 

As the Effendi happened to be alone with Demetrius (for 
he had dismissed his interpreter), and as there was somewhat 



170 Dutch Pictures. 

exceedingly menacing in the stalwart frame and clenched teeth, 
of the Greek, his interlocutor judged it expedient to lower 
his tone. 

" Can yon remove the spells you have laid on the ships ?" 
he asked. 

"Those that are launched are past praying for." 

" Will the next float ? " 

" If I choose." 

"And the next?" 

" If I choose." 

" Name your own reward, then," said the Effendi, im- 
mensely relieved. "How many piastres do you require? 
Will ten thousand do?" 

"I. want much more than that," replied Demetrius the 
Diver, with a grim smile. 

" More ! What rogues you Greeks are ! How much 
more ?" 

" I want," pursued the Diver, " my wife Katinka back 
from Stamboul. She was torn away from Scio, and is in the 
harem of the Capitan-Pacha. I want my three children, my 
boy Andon, my boy Yorghi, and my girl Eudocia. When I 
have all these, here at Massalian (Marseilles), and twenty 
thousand piastres to boot, your frigates shall be launched in 
safety." 

" All well and good," said the Effendi ; " I will write to 
Stamboul to-night, and you shall have all your brood and the 
piastres as well within two months. But what security have 
I that you will perform your part of the contract ? The word 
of a Greek is not worth a para." 

" You shall have a bond for double the amount which you 



Demetrius the Diver. 171 

will hand over to me, from two merchants of Marseilles. 
You cannot give me all I should like," concluded the Diver, 
with a revengeful frown. " You cannot give me back my 
aged father's life, my sister's, my youngest child's ; you can- 
not give me the heart's blood of the Albanian wolf who slew 
them." 

Within a quarter of a year, Demetrius the Diver was 
restored to his family. He insisted upon receiving the stipu- 
lated reward in advance, probably holding as poor an opinion 
of the word of a Turk as the Effendi did of the word of a 
Greek. The momentous day arrived when the third frigate 
was to be launched ; and a larger crowd than ever was col- 
lected. Everybody was on the tiptoe of expectation. Deme- 
trius the Diver, who, during the past three months had had 
free access to the ship-builders' yard, was on board. The 
dogshores were knocked away, the frigate slid down her ways, 
and took the water in splendid style. The launch was com- 
pletely successful. The Eifendi was in raptures, and believed 
more firmly in the power of the evil eye than. ever. A few 
days afterwards the fourth frigate was launched with equal 
success. 

" Marvellous man ! " cried the envoy of the Sublime Porte • 
"by what potent spells wert thou enabled to bewitch the first 
two frigates ? " 

"Simply by these," answered Demetrius the Diver, in 
presence of a large company assembled at a banquet held in 
honour of the two successful launches. " Eive years ago, my 
father was one of the most extensive shipbuilders at Scio, and 
I was bred to the business from my youth. We were rich, 
we were prosperous, until we were ruined by the Turkish 



172 Dutch Pictures. 

atrocities at Scio. I arrived in Marseilles, alone, beggared, 
my father murdered, my wife and children in captivity. How 
I lived, you all know. While the first two frigates were being 
built, I watched every stage of their construction. I detected 
several points of detail which I felt certain would prevent 
their being successfully launched. When, however, I had 
entered into my contract with this noble Effendi, I conferred 
with the shipwrights ; I pointed out to them what was wrong ; 
I convinced them, by argument and illustration, of what was 
necessary to be done. They did it. They altered, they im- 
proved. Behold, the ships are launched, and the evil eye had 
no more to do with the matter than the amber mouthpiece of 
his excellency the Effendi's chibouque ! I have spoken." 

The Effendi, it is said, looked rather foolish at the con- 
clusion of this explanation, and waddled away, muttering that 
all Greeks were thieves. Demetrius, however, kept his 
piastres, gave up diving as a means of a livelihood, and, 
commencing business on his account as a boat - builder, 
prospered exceedingly with Katinka his wife, and Andon, 
Yorghi, and Euclocia, his children. As to the two frigates, 
they were equipped for sea in good time, and were, I believe, 
knocked to pieces by the allied fleets at the battle of 
Navarino. 



XII. 

THE CAPTAINS PRISONER, A STORY OF THE '45. 

~]VTOT many miles from Kendal, in Westmoreland, there is 
-^ a little town which I will call Bridgemoor. Bridge- 
moor has a long, scattered, straggling street of houses built 
in the "any how" style of architecture. The market-place 
in Bridgemoor has a circular flight of steps in the midst, sur- 
mounted by a jagged stone stump — the pedestal, in old Catho- 
lic times, of Bridgemoor market-cross. There is a market- 
house, within whose cloister is a statue of Sir Gervase Gabion, 
Knight, of Gabion Place, hard by : who barricaded, loopholed, 
casemated, and held out the market-house, against Colonel 
Barzillai Thwaites, commanding a troop of horse and two 
companies of the Carlisle Godly train-bands, in the Cavalier 
and Roundhead days. The loyal baronet is represented in full 
Eoman costume, including, of course, the voluminous periwig- 
essential to strict classicality in those days. He stands in a 
commanding attitude, irremediably crushing with his left 
sandal a hideous stone griffin, supposed to be an effigy of 
anarchy, or Cromwellism, embodied in the person of Colonel 
Barzillai Thwaites aforesaid. The baronet's right hand holds 
an elongated cylinder of stone, which may be assumed to mean 



174 Dutch PiSures. 

a baton, a telescope, or a roll of paper, exactly as the spec- 
tator chooses, and with which he points in the direction of 
his ancestral mansion, Gabion Place, nearly half of which 
mansion he had the patriotism to blow up with gunpowder 
about the ears of the Godly trainbands ; in consideration of 
which eminent, loyal, and patriotic service, the inhabitants 
of Bridge moor caused this statue to be erected to him in the 
market-house cloister; and King Charles the Second, on His 
Majesty's happy restoration, did him the honour of playing 
basset with him twice in the gallery at Whitehall, being 
actually, in addition, condescending enough to win two score 
pieces of him and to make two jokes on the fashion of his 
periwig ; — which was all he ever did for him. 

Bridgemoor has, besides the architectural embellishments 
I have noticed, the usual complement of decent, or genteel, 
or stylish houses, being the residences of its clergyman, 
lawyer, doctor, and other local big- wigs. It has a quiet, 
humdrum, harmless population ; and manners quite as harm- 
less, as quiet, and as humdrum; but, amidst its general 
tranquillity, it possesses so great a warmth of feeling on a 
certain subject, that if a Certain Personage were to come 
over from foreign parts and set up, aggressively and defiantly, 
his Toe to be kissed in Bridgemoor market-place, he would 
be told something from Bridgemoor folk that would, I war- 
rant, astonish him. 

Such is Bridgemoor, and such it was, with few excep- 
tions, some one hundred and sixteen years ago, about 
which time the story I have to tell had action. Ihe same 
street, market-place, market-house, quiet humdrum people, 
and manners existed then as now: but. in 1746, the men 



The Captain* s Prifoner. 175 

wore cocked hats, and square cut coats; the ladies coif's, 
pinners, and quilted petticoats. The Bridgemoor ladies now 
ride in railway carriages from the Bridgemoor station along 
the railway to Kendal; in 1746 they rode on a pillion be- 
hind John the servant-man. In 1746 the market-place could 
boast of two time-honoured monuments or institutions, called 
stocks and a whipping-post ; at which latter institution very 
many vagrants, male and female, were salutarily scourged by 
the parish constable, according to the letter of the humane 
stafute of Elizabeth in the case of vagrancy made and pro- 
vided. Both of these institutions, together with a cheer- 
ful-looking gibbet on an adjacent moor, on which the bones 
of shackled corpses swung in the northern blast, and which 
was the chief lounge for the Bridgemoor crows, ravens and 
starlings, and the terror of vinous farmers returning from 
fair or market, have long since disappeared. So have 
some score cottages which tumbled down from time to 
time through rottenness, and were rebuilt in a more modern 
style. So has Gabion Place, the ancient mansion of the 
Gabion family which (house and family both), were de- 
molished at the time, and in the manner 1 am going to tell 
you of. 

In the fatal Forty-five, as all men know, Charles Edward 
Stuart came from Erance into Scotland, and from thence as 
far as Derby in England to fight for what he conceived to be 
his own. There were many widows and orphans made in 
England and Scotland, many tears of blood shed through his 
bootless quarrel for the crown with George of Hanover. In 
the more fatal Eorty-six, after Culloden, there was martial 
law in the highlands of both countries. Dragoons scoured 



176 Dutch Pictures. 

as the country side in search of fugitive Jacobite officers, of 
Jesuits, of papal emissaries, and of disaffected persons of 
every degree. Gentlemen's mansions were broken into, wain- 
scoting was torn down, flooring wrenched up, pictures were 
pierced for the discovery of the " priest's hole ; " farmhouses 
were ransacked, barns .searched, hay and straw turned up 
with swords and bayonets lest Jacobite refugees should be 
concealed beneath. In every ditch, there was a corpse ; in 
every rivulet, blood ; in every farm field, a smouldering hay- 
stack, or a shattered plough ; in every house, fear and horror 
and trembling cheek by jowl with savage brutality and 
drunken exultation. On every hearth where the red stream 
of Civil War had flowed to quench the fire of love and house- 
hold hope, there were the ashes of desolation. Women and 
young children slaughtered or outraged; men shot and 
hanged without trial or shrift or hearing ; goods and chattels 
wantonly destroyed ; crops burnt, homesteads razed ; — such 
was martial law in Northern Scotland. In England and 
at Bridgemoor, its aspect, though less sanguinary, was as 
gloomy. One hideous uniform system of military terrorism 
was in force; and though — from the number of persons 
resident in the northern counties who were attached to the 
existing Government, and had never taken any part with the 
adherents of the Pretender — there did not exist the same 
pretence for the wholesale plunder, spoliation, and blood- 
shedding with which Scotland was ravaged, still an un- 
ceasing round of domiciliary visits was made, and in almost 
every house military were quartered. 

Of the many families directly or indirectly compromised 
by the political events of the foregoing, none were so 



The Captain's Prifoner.. 177 

seriously implicated as that represented at Bridgemoor by 
the Lady Earnest Gabion, who resided at Gabion Place, and 
superintended for her son the management of the vast estates 
he owned. The lady's husband, Gervase Gabion, Lord of 
the Manor of Bridgemoor, died in 1725, leaving issue one 
son, Gervase Earnest, now twenty-two years of age. The 
family were rigid Catholics, and as rigid partisans of the 
House of Stuart. The last Squire Gabion had been inti- 
mately mixed up with the Earl of Mar's rash outbreak in 
1715. In the course of a long sojourn in France before he 
could make his peace with the Government, he married, in 
1720, the Lady Earnest Augusta Mary, sole daughter and 
orphan of Earnest, Baron Brierscourt, of Brierscourt, in the 
Kingdom of Ireland, who was attainted for his share in Sir 
John Een wick's conspiracy; but eseaped, went abroad, and 
— bidding adieu to the pqmps and vanities of the world, 
political and social — took the cowl, and died in the famous 
Monastery of La Trappe. The Lady Earnest would pro- 
bably have imitated his example, and have been received as 
a nun in the convent where she was already a boarder, had 
she not been, at the passionate instance of her brother, the 
titular Lord Brierscourt (who, under the name of the Baron 
de Bricourt, had taken service in the Erench king's Grey 
Musketeers), eventually persuaded to accept the hand of 
Mr. Gervase Gabion. They lived together very happily, as 
the story-books say, till the demise of the squire, who died 
in his bed, and in decent odour with Sir Eobert Walpole, 
leaving an infant, as I have told you, who at two years of 
age became sole lord of Bridgemoor Manor and of a rent-roll 
of twenty thousand pounds a year. 



ijS Dutch PiBures. 

As the little lad grew lie imbibed, together with a doting 
affection for his mother, and a bigoted attachment to his 
Church, an attachment quite as doting, as bigoted, as self- 
denying^ as irrational it may be to the princes and politics of 
that ill-fated, false, and faithless house, which never brought 
anything but misery and ruin upon the lands they ruled over. 
Everything around him conspired to confirm him in his love 
for the house of Stuart. The mother he idolised valued a 
golden crucifix which her father had received from James the 
Second, at Saint Germain's, next to the relics of the saints. 
His nurse was never tired of telling him of the great and good 
Earl of Derwent water ; of how he fought and bled for James 
the Third ; of how the Whigs slew him on Tower Hill, in 
London, and of the brave words he spake to the people 
there ; of how his body was brought home to the Lakes in 
earl's state and splendour, travelling only by night, and rest- 
ing in Catholic places of worship during the day ; of how she 
dressed him in a laced shroud and helped to sew his severed 
head on when he came home. The peasants in the neigh- 
bourhood were for ever telling him that, when he was a man, 
he was to bring the rightful King home ; his tutor, an Irish 
priest, mixed up Jacobitism and the Delphin Classics for him, 
and instilled the divine right of kings into his accidence, Is 
it to be wondered at, therefore, that at eighteen years of age 
Gervase Gabion was compelled to leave even orthodox and 
Jacobitical Oxford, for openly expressed and obstinately main- 
tained anti-Hanoverian principles; that at twenty-one he 
raised, equipped, and commanded as fierce a troop of West- 
moreland troopers as you could find now in the Life Guards — 
that he went in, over head and ears for Charles Edward Stuart ? 



The Captains Prifoner. 179 

When Culloden had been fought, and the Prince was 
hiding, and the proscription came, a troop of Morrish's regi- 
ment of dragoons (the yellow horse) came to Bridgemoor. 
The name and character of the widow of Squire Gabion 
stood so high, she was so beloved far and near for meekness 
and goodness, that her house, until the date of the com- 
mencement of this story, had been left sacred. But a strict 
watch was kept on her and hers. 

The Lady Earnest had been, for nearly a score of years, 
in the habit of receiving, in the great oak parlour of Gabion 
Place, every night in the week save Sunday, the principal 
inhabitants of Bridgemoor. They ate and drank nothing, 
save on stated occasions, for which special invitations were 
issued ; but the ladies brought their needlework, and the 
men played at a very solemn and intricate game called 
Trictrac. Two circumstances may have induced the. Lady 
Earnest to hold these very frequent reunions. In the first 
place, there was no family in Bridgemoor of sufficient rank 
to admit of her visiting them ; in the next, she had been 
educated abroad, where it is the custom for the principal lady 
in a provincial town to " receive " six times a week. • So, 
night after night, winter and summer, there assembled in the 
great oak parlour Doctor Boyfus the iEsculapius of Bridge- 
moor, (sometimes Mrs. Boyfus,) and Mr. Tappan the solicitor; 
the three Miss Tappans, his elderly sisters (very assiduous in 
their attendance), old Captain Limberup, who had been with 
the Duke at the battle of Hochstedt ; one Mr. Paul, who had 
formerly dealt in druggets at Leeds, and was, consequently, 
somewhat looked down upon ; but who was so devout a 
Catholic, so warm a Jacobite, and so good a man, that he 

N 2 



180 Dutch Pictures. 

had been admitted on a sort of good-humoured sufferance for 
full ten years as an honorary member of the Gabion coterie. 
The venerable Mrs. Yanderpant, whose husband, a Dutch 
sea captain, had been summarily shot, in by-gone days, 
by William the Third for tampering with the adherents 
of the Pretender, closed the list of the regular frequenters 
of the oak parlour. The rector of the parish, Dr. Small, 
came but seldom; he was a Low Churchman, who had 
for the greater part of his life been very much occupied 
with the composition of a folio refutation or Bentley's "Pha- 
laris." A non-juring archdeacon of the Protestant persuasion 
(very much put to his shifts, and forced to earn his bread as 
a travelling tutor) dropped in occasionally ; but he talked too 
much about Doctor Sacherverell, all of whose sermons he 
had by heart, and quarrelled too, with Father Maziere, the 
Irish Benedictine chaplain and tutor, whom I have not men- 
tioned hitherto as one of the circle, he being as much an 
article of household furniture, as the great, long-backed arm- 
chairs or the trictrac board. Many a summer and winter's 
day had past and gone since young Squire Gervase had put 
his foot across his own threshold. In his place there came 
another visitor, unwelcome, though not unbidden; dreaded, 
yet nightly expected ; courted, but hated and feared. This 
was Captain Seagreest, the commander of the troop of horse 
stationed at Bridgemoor. He was the Pate of the town, he 
held the strings of life and death ; he could hang all Bridge- 
moor, so they said, as high as Haman, if he chose, in half 
an hour. 

On a certain cold Thursday evening in November, 1746, 
Lady Gabion had determined to close her doors to her entire 



The Captain s Prifoner. 181 

circle of visitors, as she had closed them on the preceding- 
Tuesday and Wednesday. The existence, almost cloistral, 
led by those who dwell in small towns, creates in them a 
species of habit of analysing and explaining — to their own 
satisfaction at least — the minutest actions of ther neighbours. 
All Bridgemoor was agog for the two days, and for a con- 
siderable portion of the two nights, to find a solution for 
Lady Gabion's seemingly inexplicable conduct. 

On Thursday morning, after the reception by old Mr. 
Paul of a missive from the Lady Gabion, intimating her 
renewed inability to receive that evening, and begging him 
to communicate her apologies to her visitors in collective, 
public curiosity reached the boiling point, and well nigh 
boiled over. With this curiosity began to be mingled alarm, 
not for the health of Lady Gabion, but for her life. At 
twelve o'clock in the forenoon, old Mr. Paul, walking on the 
High Street, was smartly tapped on the shoulder by a tall 
man with a black campaigning wig, a scarlet coat, a grizzled 
moustache, an evil-minded cocked hat, cruel eyes, a great 
gash across the left cheek, a trailing sabre, and jack-boots 
with long brass spurs. Mr. Paul, a venerable man, of full 
seventy years, with flowing white hair and an infirna gait, 
trembled violently when he felt the hand of captain Seagreest 
on his shoulder, and when, turning round, he found himself 
face to face with that horrible trooper. 

" I know what's going on up yonder," was the greeting 
of the dragoon. 

" Know, captain ? " faltered out Paul. 

" Ay," responded his interlocutor, with an oath, " and so 
do you, you infernal Jacobitical old rag pedlar. I've watched 



182 Dutch PiBures. 

the crew at the Place. I know their game, and T'll spoil it 
too. The old Cumberland witch, Bridget," he continued, 
" was in the market almost before daylight this morning, and 
bought eggs : the Gabion woman never eats eggs. She 
bought fowls : the Gabion woman never eats poultry. As I 
passed this morning after parade, 1 found the second window 
on the first floor of the left wing had been cleaned, and fresh 
curtained. I know who sleeps there when he is at home ; 
and you know, too, you whining Popish hunks." 

He struck the old man, sportively it may be, a blow on 
the cheek as he spoke, with his soiled gauntlet. Sportively, 
I hope, but rudely enough to bring a blush to the pale cheek, 
and a clench to the palsied hand, that, twenty years ago, 
would have been as good as a knock down blow to the ruffian 
soldado. 

Look you here, Master Teazel and Wool," he went on, 
gripping the retired cloth-merchant by the arm. cc You are 
hand and glove with this Babylon baron's daughter; you 
mumble out of the same mass-book, and plot against His 
sacred Majesty together. Now mark ! go you up, and tell 
my Lady this, — she expects her son to-night. Don't lie, old 
Judas, and say she doesn't. In this pocket," and the captain 
slapped his thigh, " I have the proclamation for the taking 
of Gervase Gabion of Gabion, dead or alive, with two 
hundred pounds reward. I come to Gabion Place to-night. 
Either T go away the accepted suitor and affianced husband 
of my Lady Gabion, or I go away, to-morrow morning, with 
a serjeant and a squad behind me. I'll ride my horse 
Turenne, d'ye hear ; but I'll have the bridle of another horse 
in my hand, and as I go away on that horse shall be her 



The Captains Pr if oner. 183 

dainty master Gervase Gabion, gagged, handcuffed, and with 
his legs tied together underneath the horse's belly." 

" Captain, captain ! " faltered Paul. 

" Tell her that ! " concluded the captain triumphantly, 
snapping the fingers of the soiled gauntlet. " Tell her that 
her pet boy shall swing at Carlisle within a fortnight ; that 
he shall be hanged, drawn, and quartered according to law, 
like a traitor as he is. Tell her that, and that I'll marry her 
afterwards into the bargain, if she isn't civil." 

And with these words swaggered away, with much 
jingling of spurs and clanging of the sabre, Captain Jesse 
Seagreest of Morrish's regiment of horse. He was as great 
a bully, ruffian, and gamester, as ever was permitted, in those 
somewhat free and easy Horse Guard days, to disgrace His 
Majesty's service. 

The cloth-merchant hurried away as fast as his tottering 
limbs would permit him, in the direction of Gabion Place. 
He was panting and trembling with exhaustion and excite- 
ment when he reached the quaint iron gate, which gave 
entrance by a sinuous carriage drive to the picturesque old 
mansion. The old porter was not so deaf and stupid, but 
he sufficiently comprehended the importance of the occasion, 
when Mr. Paul pencilled hastily on one of his tablets a pas- 
sionate request to the Lady Gabion, to let him have one 
minute's interview with her. Simon Candy, the lodge- 
keeper, was as devout a Catholic, and as staunch a vassal 
of the houses of Stuart and Gabion as can well be 
imagined, and he had no sooner read the words held before 
his eyes by the cloth-merchant, than with a nod of acquies- 
cence, he admitted him within the gate, and bidding him 



184 Dutch PiBures. 

wait an instant before the lodge door, hurried away towards 
the house. 

He returned almost immediately. 

" My lady '11 see thee," he said. " Gang thee ways oup 
yander, lad : thee know'st t' way." The lad of eighty, having 
indicated to the lad of seventy the route he was to take, 
retired into his lodge. 

Slowly and sadly — a contrast to the hurried eagerness * 
with which he had approached the house — the ancient man 
proceeded upon his mission. Now that he was so near upon 
its completion, an unaccountable reluctance seemed to take 
possession of him in unfolding its purpose. He trod lag- 
gingly through a trim, prim, square-cut garden, arranged in 
that Helvetico-Italian style of which Lenotre was the in- 
ventor and prime professor. By hedges cropped like horsehair 
cushions, through quaint triumphal arches of herbage, under 
trees cut into fantastic shapes, by zig-zag flower-pots he went, 
the gravel rasping discordantly under his feet, the leaves of 
the evergreens soughing piteously. So, on till he came to a 
glass grape-house, where was a large grape-vine, near which, 
in a rustic chair, was a lady of noble presence, with a pale face 
and great brown eyes, a white hand, a supple yet command- 
ing form, and fair hair. Some forty years had passed their- 
hands across her features, but they had dealt with her lightly, 
and had left few scars behind. If her face had not been so 
deathly pale, and her eyes so sorrowful, she would have been 
beautiful. 

The cloth-merchant was a plain man, and told what he 
had to say as plainly and succinctly as he could. " Dear 
lady," he said in conclusion, "if what this murthering trooper 



The Captain's Pr if oner. 185 

says be time, tell us at least if he has reason for his suspicion. 
Let us see what we can do to hide the truth, to save our boy. 
There is not a soul in Bridgemoor, I will be sworn, but would 
go through fire and water to serve you — the swashbuckler 
dragoons excepted. Joe Limberup (the captain) is in the 
commission of the peace. He might help us." 

For reply she took him by the hand, and pulled him 
rather than led him into a little shed, outside, in which the 
gardener kept his tools. She closed the ricketty door, she 
hung her mantle over the latch, she looked around so 
scared and bewildered, as if she feared the sparrows on 
the window-sill would carry her secret ; then, pulling from 
her bosom a torn, dirty, crumpled piece of paper, she thrust 
it into the old man's hand, and bade him read it. 

It was a letter from her son, Gervase Gabion. It said 
that he was in prison, and in peril of his life ; but that he 
had planned an escape. He indicated three days, Tuesday, 
Wednesday, and Thursday in this same week, on which he 
might come disguised to Gabion. If he did not come on the 
third day he was to be considered dead. There was neither 
place nor date to the hurried scrawl which was as a life 
or death warrant to two human beings ; but there was a 
postscript, in which he bade his mother give a munificent 
reward to the messenger who had brought the letter. 

" And this is Thursday," cried the lady. " He will be 
here to-night, and the red-coats know it, and they will carry 
him off and hang him ! " 

"Trust in me," responded Ezra Paul. "He shall be 
saved. I will have scouts posted all round the place all 
night, to watch for him ; but, dear lady, you must disarm 



186 Dutch Pictures. 

suspicion, you must receive your usual visitors to- 
night." 

" But the dragoon — the dragoon ! He will be here." 

" Hang the dragoon," cried Ezra, in his piping voice, 
"we will watch him. I'll get. drunk, I'll poison him, I'll 
kill him." 

Passing down the main street, by the threshold of the 
town-brewery, which had been converted into a temporary 
barrack, he was hallooed to by Captain Seagreest, who was 
smoking a pipe and watching one of his troopers clean his 
famous horse Turenne with a wisp of straw, cursing the man 
heartily, and kicking him bewhiles. 

" You've done your errand I see, old Slyboots," he roared 
out condescendingly. " See here, what a pretty paper- 
hanging I mean to cover my barrack-yard with." 

Paul looked up. There was a proclamation offering the 
reward for the apprehension of Gervase Gabion, twenty-two 
years of age, light curly hair, blue eyes, six feet in height, a 
scar on the left hand. 

The cloth-merchant shuddered, and, in as civil terms as 
he could command, notified to the dragoon that a slight indis- 
position, under which the Lady Gabion had been suffering, 
having yielded to two days' quiet nursing, she was willing to 
receive as usual that evening, and begged the favour of his 
company. To his unspeakable joy and relief the captain 
informed him, with a sarcastic bow, that duty would call 
him away the whole of that night from Bridgemoor, " and 
as for the little bit of business I have with my Lady Gran- 
deur," he sneered forth, " that may as well be settled to- 
morrow evening as this." With this, Paul took leave of him. 



The Captain's Pr if oner. 187 

" And yet," he said to himself musingly, as he bent his 
steps towards the abode of Captain Limberup, " there are 
some devil's thoughts under that campaigning wig of his. Is 
he going to scour the country with his marauding, tapstering 
butchers ? Yet his plan must evidently be to catch the bird 
in its nest. To have it taken elsewhere would spoil his 
plans. Perhaps he is only off on some drinking bout with 
the other Philistines at Kendal." 

The Gabion " Thursday night " was held as usual. The 
dreary game of trictrac went on as usual. Prodigal Sons, 
and Sacrifices of Isaacs were worked in parti-coloured silks 
for chair covers or screens. Snuff was taken, quiet remarks 
hazarded, half-crowns decorously won and lost. Lady Gabion 
sat paler than she had been that morning, with forced con- 
ventional smiles playing on her wan lips. The ticking of 
the clock smote on her ear like a hammer on an anvil, the 
wind outside screamed as in pain, the twisted bell-pulls 
seemed as hangman's halters, the great oak parlour seemed to 
her as the Yalley of the Shadow of Death. And, though 
the dreaded Seagreest was not there, his very absence increased 
instead of allaying her terrors. 

Towards eleven of the clock of this same Thursday night, 
a young man riding a grey horse, with a docked military 
tail — as troop horses were docked then — and splashed, man 
and horse, up to the eyes, was making his way from 
Kendal to Bridgemoor. He seemed to know the country, 
for he avoided the main route, and came by a devious and 
circuitous path. Por all his caution, though, he was chal- 
lenged once or twice by horsemen, but a few words, and the 



1 88 Dutch PiBures. 

sight of a paper he carried in his breast, were a sufficient 
passport for him. He clattered down the main street of 
Bridgemoor, as far as the brewery barrack, in front of which 
stopping boldly and resolutely, he called to the sentry to call 
the serjeant of the guard. 

In a minute or two the officer in question came forth 
from the guard-house, holding a lantern, and offering, in his 
unsteady gait, rolling head, and blinking eye, an interesting 
problem to the philosopher as to whether he were more drunk 
than sleepy, or more sleepy than drunk. 

" I am on the King's business," said the man on horse- 
back. " I am Corporal Harris of Hawley's dragoons, on my 
way to Lancaster. Here are my pass, papers, and billet. 
The mayor of Kendal has given me a billet on one. Lady 
Gabion, of Gabion Place here. Which is the way to it?" 

The serjeant held up his lantern to examine the papers 
which the horseman offered for his inspection. 

"Good!" cried the serjeant, lowering his lantern. 
" Good night, comrade. Jolly good quarters you'll get at 
the popish woman's. Corporal Poss, tell him the way to 
Gabion Place ! " L T pon which the serjeant nodded, and 
returned, lantern and all, into the guard-house. 

Corporal Foss did as he was bidden, and, after watching 
the retreating figure of the horseman till it disappeared at 
the curve of the street, returned to the guard-house also. 

" Serjeant Scales," he remarked to his superior officer, as 
the two resumed the consumption of two pipes and two mugs 
of beer, " wasn't that young fellow very like the chap pro- 
claimed for, dead or alive, with two hundred shiners reward 
for nailing him ? " 



The Captain's Prifoner. 189 

" Hang you for a fool, Corporal Foss ! " responded the 
Serjeant. "Didn't I see the Duke of Cumberland's own fist 
at the bottom of the pass ? We should have more stripes on 
our backs than on our arms if we had stopped that cull, you 
whaekhead." 

As the Lady Earnest Gabion sat trembling in the great 
oak parlour alone, her guests having left her about half an 
hour, the ticking of the clock, sharp and distinct as it was, 
was suddenly rendered partially inaudible by the clattering of 
distant hoofs. The lady stood up in the middle of the cham- 
ber, so that when she heard the hoofs come nearer, nearer, 
nearer still ; when she heard the lodge-gate open, a man dis- 
mount, the door-bell ring, the portal open, and the voice of 
Bridget the old housekeeper cry out below in joyful recogni- 
tion, "My master — my young master!" .she went down on 
her knees for joy and thankfulness. 

"He is here! He is here, dear mistress!" cried the 
housekeeper, rushing into the room. 

"Who is here?" asked a harsh voice, as a gaunt figure 
stepped from behind the tapestry on the landing and laid its 
knotty hand on Lady Gabion's arm. " Who is here ?" asked 
Captain Seagreest. 

" Let me go to my son !" screamed the lady. 

" Hush, for heaven's sake ! hush, my dear mistress," said 
the housekeeper. "My lady is well-nigh distraught, your 
honour. The gentleman is one of King George's soldiers 
quartered here for the night, and here is his paper, sir." 

So saying, she held forth to the brutal trooper the billet, 
which the supposed corporal had put into her hand as he 
entered. 



190 Dutch PiBures. 

"Bah!" the captain replied with sublime contempt. 
" Go and see your baby, my lady. Make your most of him 
for five minutes. After that he belongs to me." 

He loosened his hold of the lady, who sprang from his 
grasp like a bird. She rushed into the wide entrance hall, 
and folded in her arms the tall young man standing there. 

"My % own boy!" she cried, sobbing and kissing him 
passionately. Till, looking up in his face, she gave one loud 
and awful scream, saying, "This is not my son!" and fell 
down senseless. 

" Goodness forgie us and save us if it is !" cried Bridget 
in an agony, " and yet how like ! The very hair, the very 
blue een, and wavy hair, and all. Holy mother ! the very 
mark on his hand." 

"Not her son!" said Captain Seagreest, stepping un- 
concernedly over the prostrate form of Lady Gabion, and 
staring the astonished soldier in the face, "Who are you, in 
the devil's name?" 

" Corporal Harris, Captain Butt's troop, Hawley's dra- 
goons," answered the young soldier drawing himself up, and 
saluting the uniform of his officer. " On my way to Lan- 
caster with a dispatch to Colonel Tarleton. Here is my pass 
and papers, there is my billet for the night. God save the 
King, and confound the Pope, the Devil, and the Pretender." 

Lady Gabion died that night of spasms in the heart. It 
was afterwards known that at the very hour and minute of 
the arrival of the soldier at Gabion Place her son Gervase, 
who was being brought under strong escort to London, and 
had been confined for the night in a barn at Highgate, was 
shot dead by the guard in an attempt to escape. 




XIII. 

DOCTOR PANTOLOGOS. 



DOCTOE PANTOLOGOS taught school at Accidentium 
for thirty years. I wo aid rather not reveal where 
Accidentium is. Let it be in Blankshire. We don't want, 
down at Accidentium, the Government Commissioner, or 
any other commissioner or commission whatsoever. If we 
have grievances, we can suffer and be strong, as Mr. Long- 
fellow says ; or, as our homely synonym has it, we can grin 
and bear it. 

Some years ago, indeed, we should have had far greater 
cause to deprecate the arrival of any strangers among us, or 
their inquiries into our affairs ; for we had one great, patent, 
notorious, grievance. The school that Doctor Pan^ologos 
taught was woefully mismanaged. Not by its master — he 
was a model of probity, and a monument of learning — but 
by Somebody, who might as well have been Nobody, for we 
never saw him or them ; and the Free Grammar School at 
Accidentium went on from year to year becoming more 
ruinous without, while it decreased in usefulness within. 
Somebody, who had no right to Anything, received the major 
portion of the funds, those who ought to have had much got 



*9 2 Dutch Pictures. 

little, and those who were entitled to little got less. There 
were prebendaries concerned in Accidentium Grammar School, 
and an Earl of Something, likewise an Act of Parliament, 
Sythersett's Charity, and sundry charters, which, for anything 
we ever saw of them, might have furnished the old parchment, 
crabbed handwriting-filled covers to the school lexicons and 
dictionaries; but, for all these influential connections,, nobody 
repaired the roof of the school-room, or increased the salary 
of Doctor Pantologos. Both needed it very much. The vicar 
talked of looking into it, but he was poor, and half blind 
besides, and died ; and his successor, a vellum complexioned 
young man, bound in black cloth, white lawn edges, and 
lettered to a frightful degree of archaeological lore, had no 
leisure for anything out of church time save stone breaking 
on the road (with a view to geological improvement), and 
taking rubbings in heelball of the monumental brasses of the 
church chancel. Moreover, he was supposed to have his own 
views about a new Grammar School, which he was understood 
to conceive as a building in the Pointed manner ; — the boys 
to wear cassocks and bands, with crosses on their breasts, 
like buns ; to attend church at eight o'clock every morning, 
and four times a day afterwards; to learn intoning, and 
the Gregorian chant generally; and, in the curriculum of 
their humanities, to study Homer and Virgil far less than 
Augustine and Jerome. So the Vicar and Doctor Pantologos 
fell out, as well on this question as on the broad question of 
surplices, copes, candlesticks, flowers, lecterns, and wax- 
candles; and the Doctor said he pitied him ; while he (his 
name was Thurifer) wondered whatever would become of an 
instructor of youth who smoked a pipe, and played at 



Do 51 or Panto logos. 193 

cribbage. Borax, the Radical grocer (we had one grocer, and 
one Radical in Accidentium), threatened to shew the school 
up ; but he took to drinking shortly afterwards, and ran away 
with Miss Cowdery, after which he was " buttoned up " (an 
Accidentium term for financial ruin), and was compelled to 
fly for shelter to Douglas, Isle of Man. 

The little river Dune, which, in the adjoining manufacturing 
counties of Cardingshire, Rollershire, and Spindleshire, became 
a broad, sober, gravely flowing, stream, refreshingly dirty (in 
a commercial sense) at Slubberville, and as black as ink at the 
great town of Drygooclopolis, was, at Accidentium, a little, 
sparkling, purling, light-hearted, thread of water; now 
enlivening the pebbles as a Norman menetrier does the village 
maidens, making them dance willy nilly ; now enticing the 
rushes into liquor ; now condescending to act as a looking- 
glass for a bridge ; now going out, literally, on the loose, of 
its own accord, by splitting up into little back waters, rivulets, 
and streamlets, sparkling through the convolvuli to the delight 
of the wayfarer, and scampering by cottage doors to the glory 
of the ducks ; but everywhere through the valley of the Dune 
a jovial, hospitable, earnest, little river : the golden cestus of 
Venus, by day thrown heedlessly athwart the verdant valley, 
at night shining silver bright — 

"As if Diana in her dreams, 
Had dropped her silver bow, 
Upon the meadows low." 

A free hearted river, crying to hot boys, Come bathe ! and to 

the thirsty cows, Drink ! and to the maidens of Accidentium, 

Bring hither your fine linen, and see how white the Dune 

water will make it ! 



194 Dutch PiBures. 

Close to the river bank (the water was visible through the 
bid latticed windows of the schoolroom; and, suggesting 
bathing, was a source of grievous disquiet to the boys in 
summer time) was the Accideutium Grammar School. It was 
a long, low, old, building, not of bricks, but of stones so old 
that some said they had once formed part of the ancient abbey 
of Accidentium, and others that they were more ancient still, 
and came from the famous wall that the Romans built, to 
keep out those troublesome Paul Prys who always would 
intrude: the Picts and Scots. 

The latticed windows, twinkling through the ivy; the 
low-browed doorway, with its carved, ironclamped portal ; 
the double-benched porch before it; and sculptured slab 
overhead, shewing the dim semblance of an esquire's coat-of- 
arms, and a long, but a'most wholly effaced, Latin inscription, 
setting forth the pious injunctions of Christopher Sythersett, 
Armiger, relative to the charities he founded — injunctions how 
observed, oh, ye prebendaries and somebodies ! these were 
the most remarkable features of the exterior of Accidentium 
Grammar School. There had once been a garden in front, 
and a pretty garden, too ; but the palings were broken down, 
and the flowers had disappeared long since, and the weeds 
had it all their own way. Moreover, a considerable number 
of the latticed panes were broken, there were great gaps in 
the stone-masonry, the river frequently got into the garden 
and wouldn't get out again, the thatch was rotten and the 
belfry nearly tumbling down; but what was that to anybody? 
Borax said it was a shame; but so is slavery a shame, and 
war, and poverty, and the streets by night — all of which, we 
know, nobody is accountable for, or in fault about. 



Doff or Pan to logos. J 95 



The first thing you heard when you entered the long, low, 
stone, schoolroom, with its grand carved oak roof all covered 
with cobwebs, and falling down piecemeal, through neglect, 
was a din — a dreadful din. Latin was the chiefest thing 
learnt in Accidentium School, and a Latin noise is considerably 
more deafening than an English noise. 'Every boy learnt his 
lesson out loud — at least, every boy who chose to learn — the 
rest contenting themselves with shouting out terminations as 
loud as they could, and rocking themselves backwards and 
forwards on their forms, after the manner of studious youths, 
learning very hard indeed. There was a considerable amount 
of business transacted in the midst of this din, in rabbits, 
silkworms, hedgehogs, tops, marbles, hardbake, and other 
toys and luxuries. Autumnal fruits were freely quoted at 
easy rates between the moods of the verb Amo, and the 
declensions of nouns and adjectives. One Jack, a killer of 
giants; and seven shameless, swaggering, fireeating, blades, who 
called themselves Champions, and of Christendom, forsooth; 
together with a genteel youth in complete mail, young Valentine 
indeed, with his brother Orson (not yet accustomed to polite 
society), were often welcome, though surreptitious, guests at 
the dog's-eared tables, where nothing but the grim Vocito, 
the stern Vocitas, and the redoubtable Yocitavi; or, at most, 
the famous chieftains Mars, Bacchus, and Apollo, should have 
feasted. 

After the din, the next thing that was heard was the voice 
of Doctor Pantologos. And it was a voice. It rolled like the 
Vesuvian lava — fierce, impetuous, and fiery, at first; and then, 
still like lava, it grew dry ; and then, to say the truth, like 
lava again, it cracked. Grandiloquent was Doctor Pantologos 

o2 



196 Dutch Piclures. 

in diction ; redundant in simile, in metaphor, in allegory,- 
irony, diaresis, hyperbole, catechresis, periphrasis, and in all' 
the other figures of rhetoric. Barely did he deal in comparatives 
— superlatives were his delight. But, though his voice rolled 
and thundered — though he predicted the gallows as the 
ultimate reward of bad scanning, and the hulks as the 
inevitable termination of a career commenced by inattention 
to the As in presenti ; though his expletives were horrible to 
hear (all in Latin, and ending with isshmis) ; though he 
threatened often, he punished seldom. His voice was vox et 
prater ea nihil — gentle, and kind, and lamblike, for all his 
loud and fierce talk ; and the birchen rod, that lay in the 
dusty cupboard behind him, might have belonged to Doctor 
Busby, so long had it been in disuse. 

Doctor Pantologos was a very learned man. He could not 
measure lands, nor presage tides and storms, nor did the 
rumour run that he could gauge ; but he was as full of Latin, 
Greek, and Hebrew, as an egg is popularly said to be full of 
meat. He was a walking dictionary. A Thesaurus in rusty 
black. A Lexicon with a white neckcloth. Bayle, Erasmus, 
the Scaligers, Bentley, Salmasius, the Scholiast upon Every- 
body, all rolled up together. The trees, clad with leafy 
garments to meaner mortals, were to him hung only with 
neat little discs, bearing derivations of words and tenses. 
The gnarled oak had no roots to him but Greek roots. He 
despised the multiplication table, and sighed for the Abacus 
back again. He thought Buffon and Cuvier, Audubon and 
Professor Owen infinitely inferior, as natural historians, to 
Pliny. He had read one novel — the Golden Ass of Apuleius; 
©ne cookery book, that of Apicius, Galen, Celsus, iEsculapius, 



Dofior Pantologos. I 97 

and Hippocrates, were the whole of the Faculty to him. 
Politics were his abomination ; and he deemed but three 
subjects worthy of argument — the bull of Phalaris, the birth- 
place of Homer, and the iEolic Digamma. 

On this last subject he had written a work — a mighty 
work, still in manuscript, from which he frequently read 
extracts, which nobody could understand, and which Borax, 
the Sceptic, declared the Doctor didn't understand himself. 
Either, said Borax, the Ironical, the Doctor was mad before he 
began the work, or he would go mad before he finished it It 
was a wondrous book. Written on innumerable fragments 
of paper, from sheets of foolscap to envelopes of letters and 
backs of washing bills. The title page, and some half-dozen 
sheets besides, were fairly copied out and ready for press. 
" A Treatise on the Origin and History of the iEolic 
Digamma (with strictures upon the Scholiast upon Every- 
body, of course), by Thoukydides Pantologos, Head Master 
of the Pree Grammar School at Accidentium." Thus 
classically did he write his name : he was of the Grotian 
creed, and scorned the mean, shuffling, evasive, Thucy- 
dides. 

Whenever things went contrarywise with the Doctor, he 
flew for consolation to the treatise. He made a feint of not 
employing himself upon it in school hours ; but, almost every 
afternoon, and frequently in the morning, he would cry, after 
many uneasy pinches of snuff; "Boy! go to my domicile 
and fetch the leathern satchel that lyeth on the parlour table." 
Straightway would the boy addressed, start on his errant ; 
for, though the Doctor's cottage was close by, it oft-times 
happened that the boy managed to find time for the purchase 



198 Dutch Pictures. 

of cakes and apples — nay, for the spinning of tops and 
tossing of leathern balls, and for unlawful " chivying" round 
the town pump, a highly ancient and venerable structure 
of Accidentium. Back would the boy come with the 
famous leathern satchel gorged with papers. Then Doc- 
tor Pantologos would dip his bony arm into it and draw 
forth a handful of the treatise, and would fall to biting 
his pen, and clenching his hands, and muttering passages 
concerning the welfare of the iEolic Digamma, and in a 
trice he would be happy ; forgetting the din and the dust, 
the ruinous schoolroom, his threadbare coat, the misapplied 
funds, and his inadequate salary — forgetting, even, the 
existence of the three great plagues of his life, his sister 
Volumnia, his sister Yolumnia's children, and that boy Quan- 
doquidem. 

Volumnia was the widow of a Mr. Corry O'Lanus, an 
Irishman, and an exciseman who had fallen a victim to his 
devotion to his official duties, having lost his life in " a diffi- 
culty," about an illicit still in the county Tipperary, much 
whiskey being spilt on the occasion, and some blood. To 
whom should the widowed Volumnia fly for protection and 
shelter but to her brother Thoukydides Pantologos ? And 
Thoukydides Pantologos, whose general meekness and lamb- 
likelihood would have prompted him to receive the Megathe- 
rium with open arms, and acknowledge the Plesiosaurus as a 
brother-in-law had he been requested so to do, did not only 
receive, cherish, aid and abet his sister Volumnia, but like- 
wise her five orphan children — Elagabalus James, Com- 
modus William, Marius Frederick, Drusilla Jane, and 
Poppsea Caroline. They had all red hair. They all fought, 



DoBor Panto logos. 199 

bit, scratched, stole and devoured, like fox-cubs. They tore 
the Doctor's books ; they yelled shrill choruses to distract 
him as he studied ; they made savage forays upon the 
leathern satchel : they fashioned his pens into pea-shooters, 
ate his wafers, poured out his ink as libations to the infernal 
gods. In a word, they played the very dickens with Doctor 
Pantologos. And Volumnia, whose hair was redder than 
that of her offspring, and in whose admirable character all the 
virtues of her children were combined, watched over this 
young troop with motherly fondness ; and very little rest did 
she let her brother have night or day if the bereaved orphans 
of Mr. O'Lanus wanted new boots, or socks, or frocks. 

Mrs. O'Lanus had no money, no wit, no beauty, no good 
qualities to speak of, but she had a Temper. By means of 
this said temper she kept the learned Doctor Pantologos in 
continual fear and trembling. She raised storms about his 
ears, she scolded him from doors and objurgated him from 
windows, she put " ratsbane in his porridge and halters in 
his pew" (figuratively of course), she trumpeted his mis- 
doings all over the village, and was much condoled with for 
her sufferings (a more harmless and inoffensive man than the 
doctor did not exist) ; she spent three fourths of his small 
income upon herself and her red-haired children; yet Thouky- 
dides Pantologos bore it all with patience, aud was willing to 
believe that Yolumnia was a martyr to his interests; that 
she sacrificed her children to him, and only stayed with him 
to save him and his house from utter rack and ruin. 

Did I ever mention that a great many years before this 
time, Doctor Pantologos took to himself a wife — a delicate 
lady who died — called Formosa, and who dying left a little 



200 Dutch Pictures, 

child — a girl, called Pulchrior ? I think not, — yet it was so, 
and at this time this child had grown to be a brown-haired, 
rosy-cheeked, buxom little lass, some fifteen summers old. It 
pleased Doctor Pantologos to remark that she was not weak, 
nor delicate, nor ailing, like the poor lady — her mother — 
who died, and that still she had her mother's eyes, and hair, 
and cheery laugh. She was a very merry good little girl this 
Pulchrior, and I am sure I do not know what the poor Doc- 
tor would have done without her. Volumnia hated her, of 
course. She called her "rubbage,"a "faggot" and other 
unclassical names, which I am ashamed the widow of an 
O'Lanus should have so far forgotten herself as to make use 
of ; poor Pulchrior had to do the hardest work, and wash and 
dress the five red-headed children, who always fought, bit, 
scratched, and yelled, during the operation ; she had to run 
errands for Volumnia, notably, with missives of a tender nature 
addressed to Mr. O'Bleak, the squinting apothecary at the cor- 
ner (Yolumnia adored Irishmen); she had to bear all Volumnia's 
abuse, and all the turmoil of the infants with the red heads, 
but she did not repine. She had a temper, too, had Pulchrior, 
and that temper happened to be a very good one ; and the 
more Yolumnia scolded, and stormed, and abused her, the 
more Pulchrior sang and smiled, and (when she could get 
into a quiet corner by herself) danced. 

Luckily, indeed, was it for Doctor Pantologos that Vol- 
umnia did not deem it expedient that her red-headed children 
the boys at least, should receive their education, as yet, in 
the Accidentium Grammar School. The fiery-headed scions 
of the house of O'Lanus passed the hours of study in simple 
and pastoral recreations, dabbling in the mud in the verdant 



Doffior Pantologos. 201 

ditches, making* dirt-pies, squirting the pellucid waters of the 
Dune through syringes at their youthful companions, or cast- 
ing the genial brickbat at the passing stranger. Ah happy 
time ! Ah happy they ! Ah happy, happy Doctor Pantologos ! 
Happy, at least, in school he might have been, notwith- 
standing the din, and the boys who could'nt and the boys 
who would'nt learn — both very numerous classes of boys in 
Accidentum Grammar School — comparatively happy would 
the days have passed in the absorption of the treatise upon 
the iEolic Digamma but for that worst of boys Quandoqui- 
dem. Quandoquidem was a big raw-boned boy of fourteen. 
He had an impracticable head, incorrigible hands, and irre- 
trievable feet. He was all knuckles — that is, his wrists, 
elbows, ringers, knees, toes, shoulders, hips, and feet, all 
seemed to possess the property of " knuckling down," and 
bending themselves into strange angles. Quandoquidem 
was a widow's son, and his mother Yenturia, who had some 
little property, dwelt in a cottage just opposite the dwell- 
ing of Doctor Pantologos, over against the pump. Quan- 
doquidem either could or would not learn. He would 
play at all boyish games with infinite skill and readi- 
ness, but he could not say his lessons. He could make 
pasteboard coaches, and windmills, and models of boats, but 
he could not decline Mima, He was the bane of the doc- 
tor's school life — the plague, the shame, the scandal of the 
school. He was the most impudent boy. The rudest boy. 
The noisiest boy. He made paper pellets and discharged 
them through popguns at the Doctor as he pored over the 
treatise, or, as oft-times happened, took a quiet doze. He 
shod cats with walnut-shells and caused them to perambulate 



202 Dutch Pictures. 

the schoolroom. Doctor Pantologos, mild man, clenched 
his fist frequently, and looked at him vengefully, muttering 
something about the proverbs of King Solomon. 

I am coming to the catastrophe of Doctor Pantologos. 
One very hot drowsy summer's afternoon, it so fell out that 
the boy Quandoquidem, the widow's son, was called upon by. 
Doctor Pantologos to say a certain lesson. Young Quidve- 
tat, the attorney's son, had just said his as glibly as might 
be, and he, with Ioe iEgiotat, Tom Delectus, and Bill 
Spondee, with little Charley Dactyl, his fag and bottle-holder, 
were all gathered around the doctor's desk, anticipating vast 
amusement from the performances of the widow's son, who 
was the acknowledged dunce of the school. Of course 
Quandoquidem didn't know his lesson — he never did; but 
on this summer's afternoon he began to recite it so glibly, 
and with so much confidence, that his erudite preceptor was 
about to bestow a large meed of praise upon him, when, his 
suspicions being roused by a titter he saw spreading amongst 
the boys on the forms near him, he was induced to look over 
the brow of his magisterial rostrum or desk. The incor- 
rigible Quandoquidem . had wafered the page of the book 
containing his lesson against the doctor's desk, and was 
coolly reading it. 

Now, it was extremely unlucky for Quandoquidem that 
the Doctor had been without the treatise all day, and that he 
had as yet sent no boy for it. If that famous work upon the 
Digamma had been at hand, the perusal of the title-page 
alone would, no doubt, have softened his resentment ; but, 
he was treatiseless and remorseless, and Quandoquidem read 
in his eyes that the storm was about to burst. 



DoBor Pantologos. 203 

" Varlet," exclaimed the Doctor, in the lava voice, " dis- 
grace to the widow thy mother, and to thy father deceased ! 
Oh puer nequisslme, sceleratissime ; unworthy art thou of the 
lenient cane, the innocuous ferula. Let Thomas Quando- 
quidem be hoisted. Were he to cry Civis Romanum sum, he 
should be scourged ! " 

Thus classically did the Doctor announce his dread design. 
The rod that might have been in the cupboard since Doctor 
Busby's time, was brought forth ; and Thomas Quando- 
quidem, the widow's son, suffered in the flesh. 

It was a very hot and drowsy summer's afternoon, and 
the school was dismissed. The afternoon was so hot and 
drowsy that Doctor Pantologos, who had been hot and 
drowsy himself since the execution had been done upon 
Quandoquidem, began to nod in his arm chair, and at length, 
not having the treatise to divert his attention, fell fast asleep. 
He was not aware when he did so, that one boy had remained 
behind, sitting in a corner : or that that boy was Thomas 
Quandoquidem ! nor was he aware that the widow's son 
was gazing at him with a flushed face and an evil eye, and 
that he, from time to time, shook his knuckly fist at him. 

When the Doctor was fast asleep, Quandoquidem rose 
and left the 'school house as softly as possible. He hastened 
as fast as he could — not to his mother's home, but to the 
domicile of Doctor Pantologos. 

Yolumnia was upstairs writing a tender epistle to Mr. 
O'Bleak. The red-haired children were all in the back gar- 
den, socially employed in torturing a cat. When Quando- 
quidem lifted the latch and entered the keeping-room, he 
found no one there but the little lass Pulchrior, who was 



204 Dutch Pictures. 

sitting by the window, mending the Doctor's blaek cotton 
stockings. 

Now, between Thomas Quandoquidem, the widow's son, 
and Pulchrior Pantologos, the motherless, there had existed 
for some period of time, a very curious friendship and 
alliance. Numberless were the pasteboard coaches, models 
of boats, and silkworm-boxes he had made her. Passing 
one day while she was laboriously sweeping out the parlour, 
what did Quandoquidem do but seize the broom from her 
hand, sweep the parlour, passage, kitchen, and washhouse, 
with goblin-like rapidity, dust all the furniture (there was not 
much to dust, truly), give Pulchrior a kiss, and then dart 
across the road to his mother, the widow's house, shouting 
triumphantly ? Thus it came about that the little lass, Pul- 
chrior, thought a good deal of Quandoquidem in her girlish 
way, and did trifles of sewing for him, and blushed very 
prettily whenever she saw him. 

"Miss Pulchrior, please," said Quandoquidem, in a 
strange hard voice, as he entered the keeping-room, "the 
Doctor's not coming home yet awhile, and he's sent me for 
his leathern satchel." 

He looked so hot and flushed, his brow was so lowering 
and ill-boding, that the Doctor's little daughter was fright- 
ened. She could not help suspecting, though she knew not 
what to suspect. 

"And did papa send you? " she began, falteringly. 

" Miss Pulchrior," interjected Quandoquidem, as if 
offended, " do you think I would tell you a story?" 

Pulchrior slowly advanced to the table, and took up the 
leathern bag containing the magnum opus of her father, 



DoBor Pantologos. 205 

Pantologos, the erudite. She handed it to Quandoquidem, 
looking timidly in his face, but the eyes of the widow's son 
were averted. His hand shook as he received the parcel ; 
but he hurriedly thanked her, and, a moment afterwards, 
was gone. Had Pulchrior followed him to the door, she 
would have seen that the widow's son did not take the road 
towards the grammar school ; but that, like a fox harbouring 
evil designs towards a henroost, he slunk furtively round a 
corner, and, watching his opportunity, crept round the town 
pump, across the narrow street, and so into his mother's 
cottage. 

Pulchrior was not aware of this, because she did not 
follow the guilty Thomas : and she did not follow him 
because it occurred to her to sit down on a lonely stool and 
have a good cry. She cried she knew not why ; only Tom 
(she called him Tom) was so different from his wonted state, 
and at the bottom of her heart there was a vague suspicion 
and terror of she knew not what. But, at the termination 
of the good cry, she recovered her spirits ; and, when the 
kettle began to sing for tea, she was singing too ; albeit the 
insulting tongue of Yolumnia upon the topic of buttered toast 
was enough to spoil the temper of Kobin Groodfellow himself. 

Doctor Pantologos slept in the great arm chair so long 
and so soundly, that the old woman with a broom, who came 
to give the cobwebs change of air, from the roof to the floor 
(she would as soon have thought of burning the schoolroom 
down, as sweeping them away altogether), had to stir him 
up with the handle of her household implement before she 
could awaken him. Then Doctor Pantologos arose shaking 
himself and yawning mightily, and went home to tea. 



206 Dutch Pictures. 

That repast was not quite ready when he made his ap- 
pearance; for the red-headed children having tortured the 
cat until it was mad and they were hungry, had made a raid 
upon the buttered toast, and had eaten it up. Then Volum- 
nia had to abuse Pulchrior for this, which took some time, 
and fresh toast had to be made, which took more ; so, the 
Doctor was informed that he would have to wait a quarter 
of an hour. 

" Very well, Sister Volumnia," said the meek Doctor. 
" I hanker not so much after the fleshpots of Egypt, but that 
I can wait. Ad interim, I will take a pipe of tobacco, and 
correct my seventy-seventh chapter. Pulchrior, my child, 
the leathern satchel !" 

"The satchel, papa!" cried his daughter; "why, you 
sent Tom — I mean Master Quandoquidem — 'for it." 

" I sent — Satchel — Quandoquidem ! " gasped the Doctor. 

" Yes, and I gave it him an hour ago." 

The Doctor turned with wild eyes to his luckless child. 
He clasped his forehead with his hands, and staggered 
towards the door. His hand was on the latch, when a burst 
of derisive laughter fell upon his ear like red-hot pitch. He 
looked through the open window of his chamber, through 
the screen of ivy, and woodbine, and honeysuckle, he 
could have looked through the town pump, but he looked 
instead right across the street of Accidentiura, and through 
the open casement of the widow Yenturia's cottage ; and 
there he saw a red glare as of fire burning, and the boy 
Quandoquidem standing beside it with a leathern satchel 
in his hand, and his form reddened by the reflection like an 
imp of Hades. 



D off or Pan to logos. 207 

Doctor Pantologos tried to move, but he could not. 
Atlas was tied to one foot, and Olympus to the other : Pelion 
sat upon Ossa a-top of his burning head. 

The boy Quandoquidem drew a large sheet of paper from 
the satchel, and brandished it aloft. Had it been a thousand 
miles off, the Doctor could have read it. It was the title 
page of his darling treatise. The horrible boy thrust it into 
the fire, and then another and another sheet, and finally the 
satchel itself. 

" So much for the Digamma, old Pan I" he cried with a 
ferocious laugh, as he stirred the burning mass with a poker. 

"Dies Ira /" said Doctor Pantologos, and he fell down 
in a dead faint. 

Volumnia and Pulchrior came to his assistance; and, 
while the former severely bade him not to take on about a 
lot of rubbishing old paper, the latter administered more 
effectual assistance in the shape of restoratives. The red- 
headed children made a successful descent upon the fresh 
buttered toast, and ate it up with astonishing rapidity. 

When Doctor Pantologos came to himself he began to 
weep. 

"My treatise I my treatise!" he cried. "The pride, 
the hope, the joy, of my life ! My son and my grandson, 
my mother and my wife ! Poverty I have borne, and scorn, 
and the ignorance of youth, and the neglect of the wealthy, 
and the insolence of this woman, and the ferocity of these 
whelps. Oh, my treatise ! Let me die now, for I have no 
treatise ! " 

He could say nothing, poor man, but " treatise," and 
"Quandoquidem," and "Digamma," weeping pitiably. They 



2o8 Dutch Pictures. 

were fain to put him to bed' ; and Yolumnia, reserving for a 
more suitable occasion the expression of her sentiments rela- 
tive to being called " a woman," and her children " whelps," 
went for Mr. O'Bleak the apothecaiy. But, Pulchrior, 
somewhat mistrusting the skill of that squint-eyed practi- 
tioner, sent off for Doctor Integer, who was wont to smoke 
pipes and play cribbage with her papa. 

During the next fortnight Doctor Pantologos drank a 
great deal of apple tea, and felt very hot, and talked much 
nonsense. He woke up one morning quite sensible, but with 
no hair on the top of his head — which was attributable to 
his having had his head shaved. He was very languid, and 
they told him he had had a brain fever. 

Doctor Integer stood at the bottom of the bed, smiling 
and snuffing as was his wont. Pulchrior was standing on 
one side of the bed, smiling and crying at the same time, to 
see her father so well and so ill. On the opposite side, 
there stood a lad with a pale face, a guilty face, but a penitent 
face. He held in his hand a bundle of papers. 

" I only burnt the title-page," he said in a low voice. 
" All the rest is as safe as the Bank." 

" He has nursed you all through your illness," faltered 
Pulchrior. 

" He has kept the school together," said Doctor Integer. 

" Tu Marcellus eris ! " said Doctor Pantologos, laying 
his hand on the head of Quandoquidem. 

What they all said was true. Thomas the knuckly, had 
never intended to destroy the Doctor's treatise, and was 
grievously shocked and shamed when he saw how well his 
ruse had succeeded. Thomas Quandoquidem was a good 



Doffor Pantologos. 209 

lad for all his deficiencies in his accidence, and sedulously 
endeavoured to repair the evil he had done. 

The Vicar, abandoning stone-breaking and heel-balling 
for a season, had undertaken to teach school during the 
Doctor's illness ; and Quandoquidem, the erst dunce, truant, 
and idler, had become his active and efficient monitor, awing 
the little boys, shaming the bigger ones into good order and 
application, and introducing a state of discipline that Acci- 
dentium Grammar School had not known for years. No 
sooner was school over, every day, than he hastened to the 
bedside of the sick Doctor. And there was no kinder, 
patienter, abler, usefuller nurse than Thomas Quandoquidem. 

And where was the voluminous Yolumnia. Alas ! the 
Doctor's fever was not a week old when she ungratefully 
abandoned him, and eloped with Mr. O'Bleak — red-haired 
children and all. Mr. O'Bleak forgot to settle his little 
debts in Accidentium, and Volumnia remembered to take, 
but forgot to return, sundry articles of jewellery and clothing 
belonging to the late Mrs. Pantologos. I said alas ! when I 
chronicled Yolumnia's elopement ; but I don't think, setting- 
aside the scandal of the thing, that her relatives grieved very 
much, or that the Doctor was with difficulty consoled, when 
she and her rubicund progeny took their departure. 

Doctor Pantologos is now a white-headed patriarch, very 
busy still on the treatise, and very happy in the unremitting 
tenderness and care of his children. I say children, for he 
has a son and a daughter; the daughter Pulchrior, whom 
you know; the son, her husband, whom you know, too, 
though you would scarcely recognise the knuckly boy who 
could not say his accidence, in Thomas Quandoquidem, Esq., 



■210 Dutch Pictures. 

B.A., who went to Durham, and distinguished himself there, 
and was appointed master of the Free Grammar School at 
Accidentium on the retirement of Doctor Pantologos. Thomas 
has written no treatises, but he is an excellent master ; and, in 
addition, he has succeeded in stirring up an earl somewhere, 
who possessed twenty thousand a year and the gout, who stirred 
up some prebendary somewhere, who stirred up a chapter 
somewhere, and they do say that the Free Grammar School at 
Accidentium has a sound roof now, and that its master has 
a larger salary, and that the boys are better taught and cared 
for. 

Pleasant fancies ! Thick-coming fancies ! Fancies hal- 
lowed by memory which a dog's-eared grammar on a 
bookstall — the inside of its calf-skin cover scrawled over 
with schoolboy names and dates — can awaken. But the 
bookstall keeper is very anxious to know whether I will 
purchase " that vollum," and I am not prepared to purchase 
it, and the fancies melt into the iron, business day again. 




'QOfc-^ 




XIV. 



TRAVELS IN SEARCH OF BEEF. 



IF I have a mission upon this earth (apart from the patent 
and notable one of being a frightful example to the 
rising generation of blighted existence and misused energies) 
— that mission is, I believe, Beef. I am a Ccelebs, not in 
search of a wife, as in Mrs. Hannah More's white-neck- 
clothed novel, but in search of beef. I have travelled far and 
wide to find it— -good, tender, nourishing, juicy, succulent; 
and when I die, T hope that it will be inscribed on my tomb- 
stone : " Here lies one who sought for beef. Tread lightly on 
his grave : quia multum amavit." 

Next to the Habeas Corpus and the Freedom of the Press, 
there are few things that the English people have a greater 
respect for, and a livelier faith in, than beef. They bear, year 
after year, with the same interminable unvarying series of 
woodcuts of fat oxen in the columns of the illustrated 
newspapers; they are never tired of crowding to the 
Smithfield Club cattle-show; and I am inclined to think 
that it is their honest reverence for beef which has induced 
them to support so long the obstruction and endangerment of 
the thoroughfares of the metropolis, by oxen driven to 

p 2 



212 Dutch Piclures. 

slaughter. Beef is a great connecting link and bond of 
better feeling between the great classes of the commonwealth. 
Do not dukes hob and nob with top-booted farmers over the 
respective merits of short-horns and Alderneys ? Does not 
the noble Marquis of Argentfork give an ox to be roasted 
whole on the village green when his son, the noble Viscount 
Silvercorrel, comes of age. Beef makes boys. Beef nerves 
our navvies. The bowmen who won Cressy and Agincourt 
were beef-fed, and had there been more and better beef in 
the Crimea some years ago, our soldiers would have borne up 
better under the horrors of a Tauridan winter. We feast 
on beef at the great Christian festival. A baron of beef at 
the same time is enthroned in St. George's Hall,4n Windsor's 
ancient castle, and is borne in by the footmen in scarlet and 
gold. Charles the Second knighted a loin of beef ; and I 
have a shrewd suspicion that the famous Sir Bevis of South- 
ampton was but an ardent admirer, and doughty knight- 
errant in the cause of beef. And who does not know the 
tradition that even as the first words of the new-born Gar- 
gantua were "J. boy re! a boy re f signifying that he desired a 
draught of Burgundy wine — so the first intelligible sounds 
that the infant Guy of Warwick ever spake were, " Beef, 
beef!" 

When the weary pilgrim reaches the beloved shores of 
England after a long absence, what first does he remark — 
after the incivility of the custom-house officers — but the great 
tankard of stout and the noble round of cold beef in the 
coffee room of the hotel ? He does not cry " lo Bacche I 
Evoe Bacche ! " because beef is not Bacchus. He does not 
fall down and kiss his native soil, because i\\Q hotel carpet is 



'Travels in Search of Bee j. 213 

somewhat dusty, and the action would be, besides, egregious ; 
but he looks at the beef, and his eyes filling with tears, a 
corresponding humidity takes place in his mouth ; he kisses 
the beef ; he is so fond of it that he could eat it all up ; and 
he does ordinarily devour so much of it to his breakfast, that 
the thoughtful waiter gazes at him, and murmurs to his 
napkin, " This man is either a cannibal or a pilgrim grey who 
has not seen Albion for many years." 

By beef I mean, emphatically, the legitimate, unsophisti- 
cated article. Give me my beef, hot or cold, roast, boiled, or 
broiled ; but away with your beef-kickshaws, your beef- stews, 
your beef-haricos, your corned beef, your hung beef, and 
your spiced beef ! I don't think there is anything so con- 
temptible, fraudulent, adulterine in the whole world (of 
cookery) as a beef sausage. I have heard that it is a favourite 
dish with pickpockets [at their raffle-suppers. I believe it. 
There was a boy at school with me in the bygone — a day-boy 
— who used to bring a clammy brownish powder, in a sand- 
wich box, with him for lunch. He called it powdered beef 
and he ate this mahogany-sawdust looking mixture between 
slices of stale bread and butter. He was an ill-conditioned 
boy who had begun the world in the face-grinding sense much 
toe early. He lent halfpence at usury, and dealt in " sock " 
(which was our slang for surreptitious sweet-stuff) ; and I 
remember with what savage pleasure I fell upon and beat 
him in the course of a commercial transaction involving 
a four-bladed penknife he had sold me, and which wouldn't 
cut — no, not even slate pencil. But the penknife was 
nothing more than a pretext. I beat him for his beef. 
It was bruited about afterwards that he was of Jewish 



2i4 Dutch Pictures. 

parentage ■ and I heard that when he began life, he turned 
out badly. 

I have merely ventured the above remarks on the bovine 
topic generally, to preface the experiences I have to record of 
some recent travels in search of beef I have made in the 
capital of France. One might employ oneself better, per- 
haps, than in transcribing the results of a week's hankering 
after the neshpots ; and surely the journey in search of 
bread is long and wearisome enough that we might take beef 
as it comes, and thankfully. But, as I have said, beef is my 
mission. I am a collector of bovine experiences, as some 
men collect editions of Horace, and some Eaffaelle's Yirgins, 
and some broadsides, and some butterflies. And I know 
that there are moralities to be found in beef as well as in pre- 
Adamite zoology and the Vestiges of Creation. 

Let me first sum up all the knowledge I have acquired on 
the subject, by stating my firm conviction that there is no 
beef in Pans — I mean, no beef fit to be eaten by a philobo- 
sopher. Some say that the French cut their meat the wrong 
way ; that they don't hang it properly; that they don't hang 
it enough ; that they beat it ; that they overcook it. But I 
have tasted infinite varieties of French beef, of the first, 
second, and third categories. I have had it burnt to a cinder, 
and I have had it very nearly raw. I have eaten it in private 
English families resident in Paris, and dressed by English 
cooks. It is a delusion : there is no beef in Lutetia. 

The first beef I tried in my last campaign was the .'evening 
I dined at His Lordship's. Don't be alarmed, my democratic 
friend. I am not upon Lord Cowley's visiting list, nor are 
any cownetted cards ever left at my door on the sixth story. 



'Travels in Search of Beef 215 

I did not receive a card from the British Embassy on the 
occasion of the last ball at the Hotel de Ville ; and I am 
ashamed to confess that, so anxious was I to partake of the 
hospitality of the Prefect of the Seine (the toilettes and the 
iced punch are perfect at his balls), that I was mean enough 
to foreswear temporarily my nationality, and to avail myself 
of tbe card of Colonel Waterton Privilege of Harshellopolis, 
Ga. ; said colonel being at that time, and in all probability 
exceedingly sick, in his state-room of the United States 
steamer " Forked Lightning," in the middle of the Atlantic 
ocean. But, by His Lordship's, I mean an Anglo-French 
restaurant — named after a defunct English city eating-house 
— situate near the Place de la Concorde, and where 1 heard 
that real English roast beef was to be obtained at all hours in 
first-rate condition. 

Now, there is one thing that I do not like abroad ; yea, 
two, that are utterly distasteful to me. The one thing 
is my countrymen's usual hotel. This house of refection 
I have generally found exeeedingly uncomfortable. So I 
was disposed to look somewhat coldly upon His Lordship's 
invitation, as printed upon placards, and stencilled on the 
walls, till I was assured that his beef was really genuine, and 
that he was an Englishman without guile. 

His Lordship's mansion I found unpretending, even to 
obscurity. There was no porte-cochere, no court-yard, no 
gilt railings, nor green verandahs. His Lordship's hotel was, 
in fact, only a little slice of a shop, with one dining-room 
over it ; for which, I was told, he paid an enormous rent — 
some thousands of francs a-year. In his window were dis- 
played certain English viands pleasant to the sight : a mighty 



2i6 Dutch Pictures, 

beef-steak pie just cut ; the kidney end of a loin of veal, with 
real English stuffing, palpable to sight ; some sausages that 
might have been pork, and of Epping ; some potatoes, in their 
homely brown jackets, just out at elbows, as your well-done 
potatoes should be, with their flannel under-garments peeping 
through ; and a spherical mass, something of the size and 
shape of a bombshell, dark in colour, speckled black and 
white, and which my beating heart told me was a plum-pud- 
ding. A prodigious Cheshire cheese, rugged as Helvellyn, 
craggy as Criffell, filled up the background like a range of 
yellow mountains. At the base there were dark forests of 
bottles branded with the names of Allsopp, and Bass, and 
Guinness, and there were cheering announcements framed and 
glazed, respecting Pale Ale on draught, L.L. whisky, and 
Genuine Old Tom.* I rubbed my hands in glee. " Ha ! 
ha !" I said internally. " Nothing like our British aristocracy, 
after all. The true stock, sir. May His Lordship's shadow 
never diminish." 

His Lordship's down-stairs apartment was somewhat in- 
conveniently crowded with English grooms and French pale- 
freniers, and with a lamentable old Frenchman, with a pipe 
as strong as Samson, a cap, cotton in his ears, and rings in 
the lobes thereof, who had learnt nothing of English but the 
oaths, and was cursing some very suspicious-looking meat (not 

* Our neighbours have yet much to learn about our English manners 
and customs. In the Foyer of the Grand Opera, I saw, not very long, 
ago, a tastefully enamelled placard, announcing that " Genuine Old Tom" 
was to be had at the Buffet. Imagine Sir Harcourt Courtley asking the 
Countess of Swansdown, in the crush-room of Covent Garden Theatre, if 
she would take half-a- quartern of gin ! 



Travels in Search of Beef 217 

my beef, I Lope), most energetically. I have an opinion that 
stables and the perfume thereof are pretty nearly analogous 
the old world over ; so, at the invitation of a parboiled-look- 
ing man in a shooting-jacket and a passion (who might have 
been His Lordship himself for aught I knew), I went up- 
stairs. There Avas an outer chamber, with benches covered 
with red cotton velvet, and cracked marble tables, like an 
indifferent cafe ; where some bearded men were making a 
horrible rattle with their dominoes, and smoking their abomi- 
nable cigars (surely a course of Trench cigars is enough to 
cure the most inveterate smoker of his love for the weed). 
This somewhat discomposed me ; but I was soon fain to push 
forward into the next saloon, where the tables were out for 
dining ; and taking my seat, to wait for beef. 

There was myself and a black man, and his (white) wife, 
the Frenchman with the spectacles, and the Frenchman with 
the bald head (I speak of them generically, for you are sure 
to meet their fellows at every public dining-table abroad), the 
poor old Frenchman with the wig, the paralytic head, and the 
shaking hands that trifle with the knives and forks, as though 
they were red-hot. There were half-a-dozen other sons of 
Gaul; who, with their beards, cache-nez, and paletots, all 
made to pattern, might have been one another's brothers; 
two ancient maiden ladies, who looked like English gover- 
nesses, who had passed, probably, some five-and-thirty years 
in Paris, and had begun to speak a little of the language : a 
rude young Englishman, who took care to make all the com- 
pany aware of the locality of his birth-place : an English 
working engineer, long resident abroad, much travel-worn, 
and decidedly oily, who had a voice like a crank, and might 



2i 8 Dutch Pictures, 

have been the identical engineer that Mr. Albert Smith met 
on the Austrian Lloyd's steamer; and a large-headed little 
boy, with a round English jacket, who sat alone, eating 
mournfully, and whom I could not help fancying to be some 
little friendless scholar in a great French school, whose jour 
de sortie it was, and who had come here to play at an English 
dinner. The days be short to thee, little boy with the large 
head ! May they fly quickly till the welcome holidays, when 
thou wilt be forwarded, per rail and boat, to the London 
Bridge station of the South Eastern Eailway, to be left till 
called for. I know from sad experience, how very weary are 
the strange land and the strange bed, the strange lessons and 
strange playmates-, to thy small English heart ! 

Now appeared a gaunt, ossified waiter, with blue black hair, 
jaws so closely shaven that they gave him an unpleasant resem- 
blance to the grand inquisitor of the Holy Office in disguise 
seeking for heretics in a cook-shop, and who was, besides, in 
a perpetual cold perspiration of anger against the irate man in 
the shooting-jacket below, and carried on fierce verbal warfare 
with him down the staircase. This waiter rose up against 
me, rather than addressed me, and charged me with a pike 
of bread, cutting the usual immense slice from it. I mildly 
suggested roast beef, wincing, it must be owned, under the 
eye of the cadaverous waiter ; who looked as if he were accus- 
tomed to duplicity, and did not believe a word that I was saying. 

"Ah! rosbif!" he echoed, Men saignant nest ce pas?" 

Now, so far from liking my meat Men saignant, I can- 
not even abide the sight of it rare, and I told him so. But 
he repeated " Men saignant" and vanished. 

He came again, though; or rather his pallid face 



Travels in Search of Beef. 219 

protruded itself over the top of the box where I sat (there 
were boxes at His Lordship's) and asked : 

" Paint portare ? p'lale ? ole' ale ? 

I was nettled, and told him sharply that I would try the 
wine, if he could recommend it. Whereupon there was silence, 
and then I heard a voice crying down a pipe, " Paint portare ! " 

He brought me my dinner, aud I didn't like it. It was 
bien saignant, but it wasn't beef, and it swam in a dead sea 
of gravy that was not to my taste ; fat from strange animals 
seemed to have been grafted on to the lean. I did not get 
on better with the potatoes, which were full of promise, like 
a park hack, and unsatisfactory in the performance. I tried 
some plum-pudding afterwards ; but, if the proof of the 
pudding be in the eating, that pudding remains unproved to 
this day ; for, when I tried to fix my fork in it, it rebounded 
away across the room, and hit the black man on the leg. I 
would rather not say anything about the porter, if you please; 
and perhaps it is well to be brief on the subject of the glass of 
hot hollands-and-water which I tried afterwards, in a despairing 
attempt to be convivial ; for it smelt of the midnight-lamp 
like an erudite book, and of the midnight oil-can, and had 
the flavour of the commercial turpentine rather than of the 
odoriferous juniper. I consoled myself with some Cheshire 
cheese, and asked the waiter if he had the Presse. 

" Ze Time is 'gage," he answered. 

" I did not want the Times. I wanted the Presse." 

" Sare," lie repeated wrathfully, " Ze Time is 'gage. Le 
Journal Anglais (he accentuated this spitefully) is 'gage." 

He would have no further commerce with me after this ; 
and doubtlessly, thinking that an Englishman who could'nt 



220 Dutch Pictures. 

eat his beef under-done, or indeed at all, and preferred the 
Presse to the Times newspaper, was an outcast and a rene- 
gade, abandoned me to my evil devices, and contented him- 
self with crying " Voila ! " from the murky distance without 
coming when I called. He even declined to attend to receive 
payment, and handed me over for that purpose to a long 
French boy in a blouse, whose feet had evidently not long 
been emancipated from the pastoral sabots, whose hair was 
cropped close to his head (in the manner suggesting county 
goal at home, and ignorance of small tooth-combs abroad), 
and who had quite a flux of French words, and tried to 
persuade me to eat civet de lievre that was to be served up at 
half-past seven of the clock. 

But I would have borne half a hundred disappoint- 
ments similar to this dinner for the sake of the black man. 
Legs and feet ! he was a character ! He sat opposite to me, 
calm, contented, magnificent, proud. He was as black as my 
boot and as shiny. His woolly head, crisped by our bounte- 
ous mother Nature, had unmistakably received a recent touch 
of the barber's tongs. He was perfumed ; he was oiled ; he 
had moustachios (as I live ! ) twisted out into long rat's tails 
by means of pommade Hongroise. He had a tip. He had 
a scarlet Turkish cap with a long blue tassel. He had 
military stripes down his pantaloons. He had patent leather 
boots. He had shirt-studs of large circumference, pins, 
gold waistcoat buttons, and a gorgeous watch-chain. I be- 
lieve he had a crimson under-waistcoat. He had the whitest 
of cambric handkerchiefs, a ring on his fore-finger, and a 
stick with an overpowering gold knob. He was the wonder- 
fullest nigger that the eye ever beheld. 



Travels in Search of Beef. 221 

He had a pretty little English wife — it is a fact, madam 
— with long auburn ringlets, who it was plain to see was 
desperately in love with, and desperately afraid of him. It 
was marvellous to behold the rapt, fond gaze with which she 
contemplated him as he leaned back in his chair after dinner 
and touched up his glistening ivories with a toothpick. 
Equally marvellous was the condescension with which he 
permitted her to eat her dinner in his august presence, and 
suffered her to tie round his neck a great emblazoned shawl 
like a flag. 

Who could he have been? The father of the African 
twins ; the Black Malibran's brother ; Baron Pompey ; 
King Mousalakatzic of the Orange River ; Prince Bobo ; 
some other sable dignitary of the empire of Hay ti ; or the re- 
nowned Soulouque himself, incognito ? Yet, though affable to 
his spouse, he was a fierce man to the waiter. The old blood 
of Ashantee, the ancient lineage of Dahomey, could ill brook 
the shortcomings of that cadaverous servitor. There was an 
item in the reckoning that displeased him. 

" Wass this, sa?" he cried, in a terrible voice, "Wass 
this, sa? Eesh your mas'r, sa ! " 

The waiter cringed and fled, and I laughed. 

" Good luck have thou with thine honour : ride on " 

honest black man ; but oh, human nature, human nature ! 
I would not be your nigger for many dollars. More rib- 
roasting should I receive, I am afraid, than ever Uncle Tom 
received from fierce Legree. 

I have not dined at His Lordship's since — I would dine 
there any day to be sure of the company of the black man — 
but I have more to say about beef. 



XV. 



FURTHER TRAVELS EN SEARCH OF BEEF. 



I HAD been Recounting my want of success in pursuit of 
beef in Paris, and my deplorable break-down at His 
Lordship's Larder there, to my friend Lobb (telling him, 
too, all about the cadaverous waiter, and the haughty nigger 
and his pretty wife) ; and he, a renowned beefeater, as 
well as an able financier, appeared considerably interested 
in my Darrative. Lobb is a man of few words, and not 
emotional ; yet he was good enough to say on this occasion, 
that he sympathised with me, and would put me in the way 
of procuring good beef shortly. We were conversing soon 
afterwards on the interesting subject of the variation of the 
exchanges of Europe ; and Lobb was endeavouring to explain 
to me by what fortuitous inspiration of rascality the 
Neapolitan cambieri — those greatest thieves of the world — 
charged, during the Bussian war, a discount of nineteen per 
cent, upon English money, and of no less than thirty-five per 
cent, upon their dear friends's, the Austrians's, metallics (which 
operation of finance secured my still stronger adherence to 
the chorus of a claptrap song current about 'forty-eight, that 



Further ^Travels in Search of Beef 223 

I had " rather be an Englishman "). Lobb stopped suddenly, 
however, in the midst of his exposition of the mysteries of 
agio and decimals, and, bending his bushy eyebrows upon me, 
said, " De blace vor de peef is in the Rue Bicdonbin " 
(meaning the Rue Pictonpin). I bowed my head meekly in 
acquiescence to the enunciation of this assertion, whereupon 
he continued concisely, " A r riday, half-bast vive," and there- 
upon plunged into the history of the credit fonder, and the 
Danish five per cents. 

I noticed that Lobb, for the next day or two rather avoided 
me than otherwise, and that he was studiously chary of any 
allusion to the Eue Pictonpin ; but, as I knew him, though 
what is termed a "close customer," to be a man of his word, 
I kept my appointment on Friday evening. Lobb was to be 
found at a great banking house in the Eue delaPaix — a suite 
of palatial apartments, with polished floors, stuccoed ceiling, 
carpeted and gilt balustraded staircase, walnut-tree desks, 
velvet fauteuils, moderator lamps, a porter's lodge furnished 
as splendidly as an English stockbroker's parlour; everything, 
in short, that could conduce to splendour, except money. 
None of that was to be seen. To one accustomed to the 
plethoric amount of outward and visible wealth in an English 
banking house — the heaps of sovereigns, the great scales, the 
piles of bank notes, the orange-tawny money bags, the shovels 
dinted in the service of Plutus, the burly porters, the ranges 
of fire-buckets, (suggestive of the wealth of the Indies to be 
protected) — the counting-houses of the Parisian banker pre- 
sent but a Barmecide feast of riches. In place, too, of the 
strong-backed ledgers, the fat cash books, and fatter cashiers, 
of Messrs. Croesus and Co., the French seem to keep their 



224 Dutch PiBures. 

voluminous accounts in meagre little pamphlets like school- 
boys's copy books ; and the clerks are hungry looking men 
with beards. Pancy Messrs. Croesus confiding an account to 
a clerk with a chin tuft ! As far as I am able to judge, all the 
disposable bullion in Paris is displayed in little shop windows 
like greengrocers's stalls, for the special admiration of the 
Palais Eoyal loungers, and the accommodation of any English- 
man in want of change for a five pound note. At the banking- 
houses the cash box is like an Eau de Cologne box, and the 
principal amount of business transacted seems to consist in 
stamping bits of paper, executing elaborate flourishes to 
signatures, shifting sand about on wet ink, and asking for 
lights for cigars. 

I found Lobb, that master of finance, peaceably employed in 
his bureau, eating two sous worth of hot chesnuts over a bronze 
stove of classic design. Nobody came for any money ; and, 
peeping into one or two other bureaux, as we left, I caught a 
glimpse of another clerk, signing his name all over a sheet of 
blotting paper, whistling as he scribbled for want of thought, 
and of another absorbed in twisting his moustachios before a 
pierglass (A pierglass in a bank !). Yet banking hours were 
not over — they never are in Prance — and I dare say business 
to the amount of some hundred thousand francs was done 
before they closed. A shop boy let us out, a bullet-headed 
fellow with a perpetual grin, a blue bib and apron, and who, 
Lobb informed me, was even more stupid than he looked. 
He was reading a novel. And of such is a Parisian bank. 

It was a pouring wet night — the rain coming down, not 
in the sudden, sluicelike, floodgate, English fashion, but in a 
concentrated, compact, fine, unceasing, descent, cautiously 



Further travels in Search of Beef . 225 

and remorselessly, like the sand in an hourglass, or the 
conversation of a fluent and well-informed bore. The mud 
had come to stop a long night, and leaped up at you, even to 
your eyebrows, like a dog glad to recognize a friend. With 
the rain had come his inseparable French friends, bad odours 
and biting wind. They had the pavement all to themselves, 
and tossed the passengers about like ships in the ocean. 
There were some thousands of ankles abroad, for those who 
cared to see them j and the tortures of the Inquisition had 
been revived in the shape of numberless umbrellas, which 
were probed into your eyes, jambed into your ribs, thrust 
between your legs, and which gave off cascades, dexterously, 
down the nape of your neck. Prudent people had all sought 
safe anchorage in the passages; the Wealthy had chartered 
carriages, and were deciding the knotty point as to which is 
the pleasanter — to run, or to be run over. I met a lamentable 
dog in the Eue Montmartre, wet through. He was evidently 
homeless, and was going towards the Cite, perhaps to sell 
himself to a chiffionnier, probably to drown himself. 

I believe that there is no such street in Paris as the Eue 
Pictonpin, and that Lobb, for some occult reasons of his own, 
gave me a fabulous address, for I was never able to find out 
the place afterwards by daylight, nor is it to be discovered in 
any of the maps of the twelve arrondissements of Paris. We 
wandered for, it appeared to me, hours ; stumbling, splashing, 
through streets which knew not footpavements which yet boasted 
the mediaeval gutter — a Niagara of mud — which were villainous 
in aspect, and vile in smell. The lantern of the rag picker 
crossed our path, like a Will-o'-the-wisp ; viragos quarrelled at 
the doors of charcoal sheds ; porters tottered by with gigantic 



226 Dutch Figures. 

&acks, like corpses, on their backs ; that novelty in civilized 
Paris, a drunken inan, staggered out of a wineshop, and asked 
us, amid the interruptions of a hiccough, what o'clock it was ; 
and now and then some great lumbering omnibus with red 
eyes, like a bloodshot demon's, swooped by, driving us against 
the wall, and casting mud into our teeth. I was just on the 
point of revolting, and telling Lobb that I would see his beef 
hung before I would go any further, when he stopped (the 
cautious man was enveloped in waterproofing, and I had a 
great coat like a sponge), and said, 

" Dis is de peef shop." 

We passed under a scowling archway into a court-yard, 
seemingly opening into half-a-dozen others. There was some 
gas about ; but the rain must have permeated the pipes, for 
the gas blinked and glimmered dubiously, and seemed disposed 
to burn blue. Everywhere on the wall, from the basement to 
where the hideous height of stone and plaster w r as lost in dark- 
ness, there were stuck those bewildering placards concern- 
ing the names and occupations of the tenants of the different 
floors, that drive a man mad at Paris, and send him up to the 
sixth story in quest of a tailor who lives on the ground floor. 
Of course there was a hairdresser iii the house ; of course 
there were " modes " on the second floor ; of course there w 7 as 
a dentist, whose hideous armoury of dead men's fangs and 
waxen gums grinned at you from a glass case ; of course there 
was a professor of photography • together with the depot of 
some societe generate for the sale of medicated chocolate, 
camphorated pomatum, hygienic asphalte, Athenian eye- 
water, philanthropic corn-plaster, or similar excrescences of 
civilization. No French house could be complete without 



Further Travels in Search of Beef . 227 

those branches of industry. But the beef was in the second 
floor along with the " modes ;" at least a hot, unsavoury, 
meaty smell began in the court-yard and ended there ; so I 
followed it and Lobb, irrigating the stairs involuntarily as I 
went with the* drippings from my garments. 

I did not arrive in the most joyous frame of mind ; my 
very appetite was washed out of me. Nor did it increase my 
merriment of mood, when — pushing aside a green baize- 
covered door — Lobb preceded me into a bleak ante-chamber, 
very cold and barren, where there were some bare deal boards 
on tressels, and a cemetery of empty bottles. 

" Sometime dey are zo vull, we dine here," whispered 
Lobb. 

I shuddered. I would as soon have dined in a dead- 
house. But there was a curtain hanging across a doorway, 
which he drew aside, and then I entered into the real temple 
where the beef was to be. 

Silence, deep, dead, marrow-freezing silence ! Prom the 
fifty guests or so, at least ; but, from their fifty knives and 
forks a dull clicking; and, now and then, some smothererl 
sounds of gurgling, with, once in every five minutes on ai: 
average, a subdued clatter of plates. But not a word. 

There was an outer and an inner saloon, vast, lofty, well- 
proportioned ; but indescribably faded, tarnished. On- the 
old grimy walls, bedewed with the tears of generations v.T 
damp, there were here and there painted panels, surrounded 
by festoons of ghastly flowers ; and, in the panels were mil 
dewed Cupids, and cracked shepherds making love to washee - 
out shepherdesses. There were gilt cornices; and, on i}:& 
ceiling was painted the apotheosis of somebody, obscure* 1 , 

a 2 



228 Dutch Pictures. 

bleared, almost undiscoverable beneath the smoke of a cen- 
tury, and the fumes of a hecatomb of beef. There was a 
mirror over one mantelpiece, surrounded by obsolete frame- 
work ; and, on the shelf, a lugubrious clock, with a heavy mass 
of carving representing Orestes pursued by the Eumenides, or 
Clytemnestra inciting iEgisthus to slay Agamemnon,, or some 
equally lively classical episode, ticked dolorously. There were 
four long tables covered with doubtful table-cloths ; three full 
of guests eating with gloomy avidity, the fourth empty. Dim 
oil lamps burnt around. Nobody offered us a seat ; nobody 
seemed to acknowledge our presence ; no waiter so much as 
looked at us. One man only, a bald-headed biped in a long 
coat, who was standing by the funereal clock, took out an 
ebony snuff-box, just glanced at me, as if to tell me that if I 
thought he were about to offer me a pinch, I was very much 
mistaken, took a double pinch himself and sneezed. By 
Lobb's direction I secured a seat at the vacant table, as near 
the centre as possible. From minute to minute there dropped 
in men in cloaks, men in paletots, men in spencers, men in 
many-collared carricks. Some were decorated ; a few wore 
moustaches ; but the vast majority were old and clean shaven, 
and looked like men of the first empire. One little old man, 
with a round scalp polished like a billiard ball, wore a coat- 
collar of unusual height and stiffness, for the purpose, I believe 
to this day, of concealing a pigtail, which he persisted in wear- 
ing, but was ashamed to show. Nobody took any notice of 
us ; they did not even bring us bread or wine. There were 
knives and forks and napkins, but one cannot eat these things. 
This could not be a dining-house. It was the Silent Tomb. 
It was, in sober reality, though it looked so much like a 



Further Travels in Search of Beef . 229 

family vault, a table d'hote, at thirty-six sous, held in a 
dilapidated nobleman's mansion, and of the order of cookery 
known as the cuisine bourgeoise. The rule was that, as the 
tables filled, and not till then, the dinner was served ; so 
that if you arrived a moment after the number of occupants 
of table number one was completed, you had, very probably, 
to wait a quarter of an hour before table number two was 
gladdened with the joyful appearance of the soup. 

It seemed to me, on this occasion, as if I should have to 
wait all night. Lobb relapsed into mental calculations-— 
possibly about Chilian bonds (deferred), and I was left 
entirely to my own resources. The little man with the sup- 
posed pigtail, who was my neighbour, was either hopelessly 
deaf or obstinately taciturn. To my remarks about the 
weather he answered not a word. A man opposite me, with 
a large chest, a flapped waistcoat, and the face of a horse (his 
wig being brushed up over his eyes like blinkers), leaned over 
the table, and fixed his gelatinous eyes — not on me — but on 
the wall behind ; till he filled me with a' vague terror, and 
an invincible tendency to picture him changing into the 
figure-head of a ship bearing down on me to transfix and 
scuttle me. A palsied dotard, with a head like a pear grown 
on one side — and yet he was the most brilliant wit of the 
party — wagged his toothless jaws, and made a chop at me 
with his knife — so it struck my fancy at least — although, 
very likely, poor old gentleman, he was only hungry and im- 
patient for his dinner. And the grim silence of the men, and 
the unholy sounds made by the inanimate objects, and the 
dreadful ticking of the clock, beating the dead march in 
Saul on the muffled drum of my ear, so fretted, harried, 



230 Dutch Pictures. 

exasperated, and crazed me, that I would have given a 
hundred francs for a woman to enter the room ; five hundred 
for permission to bnrst into a howl, to sing, to stamp on 
someone's toes, to send a bottle flying at the head of the man 
with the figure-head face, — to do anything to provoke a 
commotion in this dreadful, dreadful, Silent Tomb. 

There were thirteen guests mustered out of the twenty- 
four, when I thought I must either speak or die. Lobb had 
slipped out to confer with the landlady (there was a landlady), 
and I had not even the consolation of abusing him for 
bringing me to such a place. I tried to divert myself by 
conjuring up images of what the grim restaurant had been a 
hundred years ago. To what Marquis, Fermier General, or 
Sous-Intendant the great hotel had belonged; who painted 
those stained panels, who that misty apotheosis. Of what gay 
scenes ; what nights of revelry, these uncommunicative halls 
of gloom had been spectators. Some one must have talked 
there at some time or other ; the walls must once have echoed 
to the laughter " of the marchionesses in brocaded sacks, 
of marquises with red-heeled shoes, — with the madrigals 
of enamoured chevaliers in bag-wigs, the gallantries of gay 
mousquetaires, the pert sayings of spruce little abbes, the 
epigrams of snuffy wits who drank too much coffee and 
wrote for the Encyclopedia. Oh for my grandmother's 
ghost, to revisit, for a moment, the haunts of her con- 
temporaries — if she would but open her mouth and chatter ! 

At extremest length, when the wheel in the cistern seemed 
about to make its last revolution, Lobb returned ; the last 
man of the twenty-four indispensable guests took his place, 
and a solemn lady in black — not my grandmother's ghost — 



Further Travels in Search of Beef 231 

though she would not have dressed the character badly — 
but the mistress of the establishment, glided into the room. 
Then a spruce man in raven black, who closely resembled an 
undertaker, took his seat by me as president, and proceeded 
to ladle the soup out of a huge tureen, 

I had grown so accustomed by this time to take the 
Silent Tomb for granted, and to consider myself pro-tem. as 
a member of a burial-club, that, had a boiled death's head 
with parsley and buttter formed the first course, 1 don't 
think I should have evinced much surprise. I contemplated, 
too, with a contented sort of stony apathy, four waiters, like, 
mutes, who came up as I imagined (my retina must have been 
affected by this time), perpendicularly, behind as many chairs. 
I supposed they placed the array of half-filled bottles of wine 
which suddenly appeared on the table, and which were not 
there before. I did not care to inquire, neither did it much 
matter, whether it were by human agency or not, that a 
small clothes-basketful of household bread was passed around. 
One thing, however, became manifest. If the guests were 
dumb, they were not at least palsied ; for a fiercer or more 
active attack upon a bread-basket I never saw. The majority 
took two pieces; and the reputed possessor of the pigtail 
carried off a whole armful of the staff of life. 

I am bound to admit that the victuals were very good. 
The soup was made from meat. Plates of carrots and 
turnips were handed round for admixture in the broth, thus, 
giving us the opportunity of converting it into a Julienne 
on a large scale. Then came the old, original, Cuisine 
Bourgeoise, Bouillon Boeuf— fresh beef, boiled, in large 
stringy lumps, with a coronal of fat, like Doctor Sacheverell's 



232 Dutch Piclures. 

curly wig. With mustard, oil, and pepper, this was not bad. 
I could have pronounced it true beef ; I could have praised 
the roast mutton that followed (a leg cut up in hunks and 
handed round), the salad, the haricots, the compote of pears, 
and the Eoquefort cheese, that concluded this plain, sub- 
stantial, and, on the whole, cheap meal (for everybody was 
helped twice, and there was an indiscreet amount of bread 
consumed), if the people would but have spoken. But they 
were dumb to the last. One solitary gleam of life (as 
connected with Mammon) there was, when the solemn lady 
came round after the bouilli, and collected our respective thirty- 
six sous in a hand-basket. The jingling did me good ; but we 
soon relapsed into our old Shillibeer joggletrot. There was the 
clicking of the knives and forks, and the occasional smothered 
rattle of the plates ; and the funeral-baked meats did furnish 
forth the table-d'kote, and the only thing wanting to complete 
this gastronomic Golgotha was the statue of the Com- 
mendatore, from Seville, whispering across the table that he 
was the father of Donna Elvira, and did you know if Don 
Juan were there, because he had an appointment to sup 
with him. 

The guests were no ghosts, though. Ghosts ! — wolves, 
rather. I never saw such a set of trenchermen. I am 
certain that every man there present must have put under his 
waistcoat at least sixty-six sous worth of solid food. The 
concern must be a loss. The Silent Tomb can't pay. 
Perhaps the proprietress is a widow with large revenues, who 
likes to spend it on these taciturn men. Perhaps it is a 
tontine, and the surviving members eat up the deceased. 
But it is certain — though I should like to renew my acquaint- 



Further Travels in Search of Beef. 233 

ance with the beef — that I can never dine there again. It is 
not good to eat and say nothing. Even the pig grunts over 
the trough. Shall we be less sociable than the pig ? 

By the time wo had finished dinner, and as I turned to 
give the waiter two sous (who, perceiving my intent, and 
being plainly a misanthrope, dropped his napkin, and fled 
into the next room), the table opposite to us had obtained its 
complement, and an exactly similar dinner was commencing 
thereat. Do they never stop dining at the Silent Tomb ? Is 
it always turn and turn about ? Table full and table 
empty ? Soup and bully, salad and roast ? Will it ever be 
so till Death slips off his waiter's jacket for a shroud, and 
the beef shall give place to bones ? 

I dexterously gave Lobb the slip in the court-yard, and 
there was a coldness between us for some days. I plunged 
into the noisiest cafe I could find, where there was a crash 
dominoes, a charivari of cups and saucers, violent disputes 
between Jules and Alphonse over sugar-and- water, and 
endless shriekings of and for waiters. I went to the Bouffes 
Parisiennes after that, and was quite delighted with the 
noisiness of the music and the absurdity of a pantomime : 
and I walked home singing the Sieur de Pramboisy the 
whole way. But I had the nightmare before the morning. 

As already stated, I have never been able to find the Eue 
Pietonpin since. I do not like to ask Lobb (though we 
have been reconciled, over kirschwasser), for certain reasons ; 
and were it not that I know him to be a man of mortal 
mould, and an exemplary clerk in a banking-house, I 
should be tempted to believe that I had been spirited 
away to some cave of glamour, and that I had feasted in 



234 Dutch Pictures. 

the Island of Saint Brandon, or spent the evening with 
Eip van Winkle. 

But I was not disheartened. There was more beef, 
I knew, in Paris than had yet come out of it. I sought a 
great beef establishment in the narrow street that runs 
parallel to the east side of the Palais Royal — a time -honoured 
place of refection by the sign of the "BcBuf a-la-mode." But 
I found beef no longer in fashion there. The waiter, who 
was far better dressed than E was, and who was the possessor 
of a watch-chain I can never hope to have the fellow of, 
looked down upon me, and thought me a poor-spirited 
creature — un liomme de rien — because I would not have 
oysters and white wine before dinner. To ask for beef at 
the " Bceuf a-la-monde " was, I found, about the same as 
asking for a cup of coffee and a thin slice of bread and butter 
at the London Coffee House. Then I relapsed into the 
semi-English houses again. At the " John Bull," at the 
" True Roast Beef," or at the "Renown of Roast Beef." But 
truth was a fiction and renown a sham. They gave me flaps 
of flesh that made me ill ; they fed me with promises, and the 
performance was but gravy and sinew. I wandered in 
a desert of restaurants, and came upon no oasis of beef. I 
began to despond. 

But hence, loathed Melancholy — away with thee, Pense- 
rosa ! See, the Allegro comes tripping soft with sweatest 
Lyndian measure. Here is Bully Beef in the " Hall of 
Montesquieu ! " 

The illustrious author of the "Esprit de Lois" has given his 
name to, or has had it taken for, a vast saloon on the ground- 
floor of a street called the Cour des Fontaines, leading from 



Further Travels in Search of Beef, 235 

the Palais Royal to the Galerie Vero-Dodat, where all old 
Paris men will remember so well M. Aubert's caricature 
shop, and its admiring crowd of loafers and pickpockets, 
staring at the inimitable pear-shaped portraits of Louis 
Philippe, and the countless Robert Macaires by Daumier. 
The Hall of Montesquieu has had its mutabilities. I 
remember it as a dancing saloon, well conducted, though the 
price of admittance was but fifty centimes. I have seen 
there a journeyman butcher in his professional blue frock 
dancing the Cellarius with a lady in puce velvet edged with 
fur, and a pink bonnet (she was, I declare, my washerwoman), 
with a gravity and decorum that showed that he knew his 
positiou, and hers, and respected both. There used to be a 
waiter, too — or, rather, an overlooker, a sort of shop-walker, 
whose duty it was to pace the galleries moodily, and to cry 
out, "Bfaut consomme?; messieurs ; " which signified that, if 
the visitors took seats, they must also take refreshment. With 
this unchanging, lugubrious speech, he always put me in mind 
of the Trappist, crying " Brothers, we must die ! " He never 
said anything else ; I don't believe he could ; but I have an 
idea that he had been an idiot from his youth upwards, and 
that this one poll-parrot cry had been taught him, and that 
this was all he knew. During the short-lived Republic the 
hall was one of the fiercest of political clubs ; and I have 
no doubt that my friend the butcher, repudiating the pue- 
rilities of the Cellarius, spoke out his mind stoutly on the 
necessity of proclaiming every master butcher an enemy of 
mankind, and of having the professional chopper used on the 
heads of the syndics. After the Republic had fallen through, 
the hall fell under the dominion of Terpsichore again ; but its 



236 Dutch Pictures. 

ehorographic reputation was gone ; and I have often seen the 
most frenzied mazurkas performed to no better audience 
than two sergents de ville, the pompier on duty, a dyspeptic 
American, and a solemn Englishman. After this, there was 
a species of assault of arms in the hall, after the fashion 
of our Saville House. I have not been told whether the 
Saladin feat, or " the severisation of the quarter of mutton/' 
took place ; but there was fencing, and much wrestling, and 
the exercise of the savate, and a series of eccentric gym- 
nastics with gloves, in which paralysis, St. Vitus's dance, the 
clog hornpipe, mesmeric passes, and the attitudes of Mr. 
Merryman when he asks you how you are to-morrow, were 
oddly mingled, and which was called " Le Boxe Anglaise," 
and was believed by the spectators to be an exact repro- 
duction of an English pugilistio encounter. I sincerely hope 
that our chivalrous neighbours may never become greater 
adepts in that brutal and debasing pastime. 

Subsequently I lost sight of the " Hall of Montesquieu " 
for a long time. Hearing, even, that the Docks de la Toilette 
had been established in the Cour des Eontaines, I concluded 
that the hall had been pulled down, or converted perhaps 
into a dry dock for coats, perhaps into a basin for panta- 
loons. But I suddenly heard that it had been doing a great 
business in the Beef line, throughout the whole time of the 
Exhibition of Industry ; that it had been dining its two and 
three thousand a day ; and that it was now the " Etablisse- 
ment du Bouillon-Bceuf," with subordinate establishments in 
the Bue Coquilliere, the Kue de la Monnaie, and the Hue 
Beauregard. 

I was off to the Cour des Fontaines immediately. There 



Further Travels in Search of Beef 237 

was a great photographic establishment somewhere above the 
hall, and effigies of scowling captains of dragoons, high- 
eheekboned ladies, and epileptic children, were hung on the 
entrance pillars in the usual puzzling manner ; but there was 
no mistaking the gastronomic character which the place had 
assumed. A species of triumphal altar had been erected in 
a niche in front, and on it were piled huge joints of beef, 
legs and shoulders of mutton, geese, turkeys, fowls, sausages, 
apples, pears of preternatural size, and real venison, furred, 
leathern-nosed, and antlered. There was an oyster woman — 
a belle ecailliere — before the door (the majority of belles 
ecaillieres are sixty years of age, and take snuff, even as the 
most numerous portion of the vivandieres in the army are 
wrinkled and ill-favoured). There was a great running in 
and out of waiters, a great ingress and egress of diners 
through swing-doors ; the whole place was full of life and 
movement, and the promise of Beef. 

On entering (it was very like entering the Crystal Palace, 
so great was the throng, so large and lively the vista be- 
yond), a courteous man gave me, with a bow, a carte of the 
viands obtainable,, with the day of the month affixed, and 
blank spaces left for the quantity consumed. Then I passed 
on into the well-remembered hall ; but, ah ! how chang-ed ! 

Prettily decorated, brilliantly lighted, crowded as of 
yore; but the orchestra and the throng of dancers were 
replaced by long lanes of marble tables, guiltless of table- 
cloths, covered with edibles, and at which perhaps four hun- 
dred persons were busily dining. In the centre were two 
immense erections, monuments covered with enamelled plates, 
and surmounted with pretty parterres of flowers. There 



238 Dutch Pictures. 

were some encaustic portraits of waiters flying about with 
smoking dishes painted on these enamelled plates, giving the 
erections the appearance of vast mausoleums, erected to the 
memory of departed garcona and cooks who had fallen before 
too fierce fires, and too hungry customers. But they were 
not cenotaphs, I discovered afterwards, but merely the cook- 
ing apparatus of the Bouillon-Bceuf; for round the base were 
ledges with the customary furnace holes and stewpans ; and 
round this again, at a distance of a few feet, an oval counter 
piled with plates, where the waiters gave their orders and 
received their dishes. In the space between circulated nu- 
merous cooks, male and female — the latter mostly very pretty 
— ah! roguish Bouillon-Boeuf ! — all as busy as bees stirring 
saucepans, dishing up vegetables, ladling out soup, and ap- 
portioning modicums of stew. And there was a loud cry 
afloat of " Versez;" for many of the four hundred were 
taking their coffee after dinner, and waiters scudded, skated 
rather than walked, from table to table, and from huge 
coffee-pots frothed up the smoking substitute for mocha. 
Pour on and be merry; rattle knives and forks; chatter 
grisettes; hoarsely order " biftek pour deux" oh! waiter; 
gesticulate, discourse vehemently, oh ! moustached men ; que- 
rulously demand more soup, and drum impatiently on your 
plates with spoons, oh ! little children in bibs, brought to 
dine at the "Bouillon-Boeuf" by your fond parents; ring 
out, ye echoes, till the glazed roof vibrates ; for here is life, 
here health, cheerfulness, enjoyment, and be hanged to the 
Silent Tomb ! 

As there was rather too much life and merriment below, 
however, for a man who wished to philosophise upon four 



Further Travels in Search of Beej, 239 

hundred fellow creatures at their meals, I went upstairs into 
the gallery, which was partitioned off into boxes, where there 
was another kitchen, though on a smaller scale to the one 
below, and where there were perhaps a hundred and fifty- 
diners more. Sitting down at one of the little marble tables 
I made the astonishing discovery that Eau de Selz — the 
French substitute for soda-water — was laid on to the pre- 
mises, like gas, or New River water. An Eau de Selz pillar, 
neatly surmounted with a blue cut-glass knob, and an Eau 
de Selz double-tap, came through the centre of each table ; 
and on reference to the carte I found that for ten centimes — 
a penny — you might have as much of the Eau de Selz on tap 
as ever you liked — and blow yourself up with aerated water, 
if you were disposed so to do. Where was the reservoir ? 
There, yonder, in one of the mausoleums. How was it 
made 1 What was it made of ? Aye, there was the rub ! 
I am no chemist ; and lest from one of these metallic taps I 
should draw forth a solution of some noxious carbonate, 
sulphate, acetate, or phosphate, nauseous to the taste, and 
inimical to the coats of the stomach, I refrained from the 
Eau de Selz at discretion, at once and for ever. 

I must say this for the credit of the " Bouillon-Bceuf, 55 
that the celerity and agility of its waiters are beyond criticism 
and compare. I was no sooner seated than a light-hearted 
child of Gaul, with a bright eye, and a chin-tuft, skipped up 
to me, brushed the table spotlessly clean (I did not mind his 
whisking the crumbs into my eyes), and blithely asked me 
what I would have. Soup he had already settled in his mind 
I should partake of; and producing a little pencil, attached 
by a silken cord to his waistcoat button, had set down a 



240 Dutch Pidiures. 

great black tick against the soup line in my carte. Bouillon 
was the word. Bouilli afterwards of course. How much 
wine? half a bottle. Would I have a table-napkin? cer- 
tainly. Bread ? of course (I could have brought both my- 
self). Four more ticks were jotted down on my carte, and 
the jocund youth went skipping off, twiddling his pencil like 
the dancing Faun his flute. 

Perhaps he was one of the departed celebrities of " Mon- 
tesquieu " when it was a dancing hall. But enough. Before 
I had well begun to speculate upon him he was back with 
my soup, my napkin, and my wine. After the discussion of 
the potage, and pending the arrival of the beef, I studied the 
carte, and profited much thereby. I learnt that soup cost 
twopence, bouilli twopence-halfpenny, roast meat and ragouts 
threepence, vegetables twopence, bread a penny, a napkin a 
penny, Eau de Selz (as I have already said) a penny, wine 
fivepence the half-bottle, though half or even a quarter of 
that quantity was obtainable, and other articles of consump- 
tion in reasonable proportion. Not very Sardanapalian, these 
items, certainly ;■ and yet the company seemed to be not only 
composed of the pettier middle class, but of very many per- 
sons in what may be termed easy circumstances. There 
were no blouses, but a good number of plain female caps ; 
but there were also a fair sprinkling of red ribbons at button- 
holes, and of bonnets with artificial flowers under them. Let 
me add that in the motley throng, order, good behaviour, and 
good humour reigned unvaryingly. 

I think my dinner cost me elevenpence. I would rather 
not be questioned about the beef; but what can you expect 
for five sous ? The place was very cheap, and very gay, and 



Further Travels in Search of Beef. 241 

exceedingly curious for those who liked to look at men and 
women in their ways. The waiter's service was gratuitous — 
ostensibly so at least. You did not pay him the reckoning : 
but descending to the contrdle, you presented your carte to an 
elegantly dressed lady who added up the items, softly but 
audibly, and told you the amount. This you paid. Then 
she stamped the document (oh, nation of stampers !) and 
delivered your carte again to a checktaker. All this light 
and space, all this life and merriment, all this beef and 
b&uilli, all this Selzer water at discretion, all this stamping 
and restamping, and all for elevenpence ! 

The next day — a red-letter day — my friend, Bumposiosus, 
who is wealthy, said, " Come and breakfast" We break- 
fasted at that Alhambra-like cafe, at the corner of the 
Chaussee d'Antin, where millionnaires sup, where your cup 
is filled from silver coffee-pots worth a thousand francs each, 
and reckonings are paid in bank notes. We had the enliven- 
ing wine of Thorins. We had eggs, poached with asparagus 
tips, we had stewed kidneys, and we had a Chateaubriand — 
a steak — ah, so tender ! ah, so exquisitely done ! It was 
delicious, it was unapproachable, it melted in the mouth ; 
but I still adhere to my former assertion. There is no Beef 
in Paris. I have not ten thousand a year ; Bumposiosus does 
not ask me to breakfast every morning ; and this was not 
eating beef; it was eating gold. 

So I am yet open to continue my travels in search of 
beef, and expect to be on the move before long. I have been 
told that in Abyssinia they bring the ox to the door, and 
that you cut your steak off hot from the living animal, on the 
cut and come again principle ; but apart from the cruelty 

E 



242 Dutch Pictures. 

of the thing, a man cannot be too cautious in receiving 
statements about Abyssinia. Still, I yearn for beef; and if 
any gentleman hear of palateable ox-flesh down Otaheite 
way, I shall be happy to record my notions of a steak in the 
South Seas. 




XVI. 

THE METAMORPHOSED PAGODA. 

• •C1EE Naples and then die," is the vain-glorious saying 

^ of the Neapolitans. The proverb has been considerably 
modified in our time. We say : See Naples — that God's own 
land of beauty and boundless fertility — that golden treasury 
of God-taught art ; and, also seeing the filthy lazzaroni, the 
swarming sbirri, the Ergastolo, the scowling priests, the blood 
of St. Gennaro, and the million and one rascals who infest 
this fairest of cities, then see Naples, and die for shame and 
indignation.* 

See Capri, too. There is a page of Eoman history that 
needs no Niebuhr to dispute, no Lewis to examine. Its 
annals are late enough, accredited enough for us to see, in no 
shadowy guise, but palpably in the records of the past ; the 
shrinking, trembling, gloomy, frivolous, yet ferocious tyrant, 
Tiberius, flying from the world to Capri — striving to shut 
out the demons his own bad passions had invoked from the 
choicest fruits and flowers of life, yet forgetting that he had 
at least a cavity where he had once a heart, and finding, too 
late, that vacuum-abhorring Nature had filled that cavity with 

* Written, Laus Deo, before the Great Deliverance by Joseph Garibaldi, 

R 2 



244 Dutch PiBures. 

devils. See Capri. The vestiges of the tyrant's palace are 
there still. There are the same stones that walled in sin and 
luxury, and that re-echoed to the carousing shouts of decadent 
Jlomans and to the cries of tortured slaves. 

Not that I ever saw Capri, or Naples either. My Italian 
travels have been made, hitherto, with my feet on the fender, 
and my eyes on a book. 

But I know of another place which I choose to call Capri. 
Half a hundred miles from London, on the south-eastern 
coast of this kingdom, the booth -proprietors of Vanity Fair 
set up, some half a hundred years ago, a camp that has cul- 
minated into the gayest and pleasantest watering-place in the 
world. I myself have known it intimately full twenty years, 
and I caught myself, the other day, moralising upon the 
great palace of Chinese gingerbread that smirks upon — well, 
I won't be personal — the S. , Upon how many thousand 
work-boxes, toy dioramas, sheets of note paper, Tunbridge- 
ware tables, pin-cushions, have we seen the counterfeit pre- 
sentment of this pompous platitude. Where were common 
sense, taste, fitness, decency, when the thing was done ? If 
George the magnificent had said to Mr. Nash, prince of 
architects, — " Mr. Nash, will you oblige me by painting your 
face in parti-coloured streaks, and by walking on your hands 
into the middle of the S., where one of the lords of ray 
royal bedchamber will provide you with four-and-twenty 
yards of scarlet riband, which you will be good enough to 
swallow ;" — would Mr. Nash have done this thing, I won- 
der ? Perhaps not. Yet the prince of architects has 
been guilty of buffooneries quite as gross, in building this 
pot-bellied palace — this minareted mushroom — this absur- 



The Met amor phofed Pagoda. 245 

dity — this gilded dirt-pie— this congeries of bulbous ex- 
crescences, as gaudy and as expensive as Dutch tulips, and 
as useless. 

We are accustomed to see and hear of kings doing extra- 
vagant things in the building line. It is their vocation. 
Cheops had his pyramid, Cleopatra her needle, Nero his 
golden house, James the First Nonsuch, and Kubla Khan — 
is it not written :-— 

la Xanadu did Kubla Khan 

A stately pleasure dome decree, 
From which a sounding river ran 
Through caverns measureless to man, 

Down to a sunless sea. 

William Bufus designed to build a palace so huge, that 
Westminster Hall, the first instalment thereof, was to be but 
one of the bed-rooms. Luckily, the state of the civil list, 
and Sir Walter Tyrrell's pointed behaviour to the king in the 
New Forest, nipped the grand design in the bud. Louis 
Quatorze had Versailles, the Abencerrages their Alhambra, 
the gloomy Philip his palatial gridiron, the Escurial ; but we 
can forgive the first for the Grandes Eaux, the second for the 
Court of Lions, the third for the pictures of Titian and Ve- 
lasquez, Frederick had his Sans-Souci, Leo his Loggie and 
Stanze, Napoleon his dream of a completed Louvre, not real- 
ised by him ; even our third William took pleasure in en- 
larging Kensington, t and making it square and Dutch, and 
formal like himself. But there was, it must be owned, some- 
thing regal, and noble, and dignified in most of these archi- 
tectural madnesses. When a king raves it should be in his 
robe and diadem, with gold for straw, and his sceptre for a 



246 Dutch PiBures. 

bauble. But did ever a petty German princelet in his hunt- 
ing-lodge — did ever a petty Indian nawaub in his zenana — 
did ever a Dutch burgher in the linsey-woolsey frenzy for a 
lusthaus — did ever an impoverished Italian marquis, in the 
palazzo he began to build through pride, and left unfinished 
through bankruptcy — did ever a retired English hatter, going 
mad, as it is the traditional wont of hatters to do, and running 
up a brick Folly, in three stories, with a balcony and a belve- 
dere — did ever any maniae in bricks and mortar perpetrate one 
tithe of the folly and extravagance that are manifested in every 
inch of this egregious potato-blight of a building on the S. ? 
I mind the time (a child) I used to gaze on the place with 
reverent curiosity. A king lived there then — a placid, white- 
headed sovereign, in a blue body-coat with brass buttons, 
and who had formerly been in the naval service. He played 
quiet rubbers at whist at night, while his royal partner and 
the ladies of the household worked in Berlin wool. It was 
rumoured that he could himself play on the flute, prettily. 
He had a quiet, decorous court. He used to drive out peace- 
ably, without any unnecessary fuss, and was not unfrequently 
to be found on the beach, bargaining with little boys for 
models of ships, or with mariners for eonchological specimens 
of appalling and weird appearance. He was popular, but 
suspected by the genteel classes of a tendency to radicalism 
and economy, which caused him to be slightly depreciated in 
the higher circles. His name was William. But the great 
king who dwelt at Capri (and had made it), and who had 
been dead some years before I came to wot of the palace, was 
not William. A loftier sounding name had he. He was 
Georgius Optimus — George the great, the magnificent, the 



The Met amor phofed Pagoda. 247 

good — who had raised Capri from its mean state as a fishing- 
village to the exalted rank of the queen of watering-places. 

So I moralised at Capri. George had gone the way even 
that royal venison must go ; William he is dead too ; and we 
have another sovereign who loves not the wicked gimcrack. She 
would have pulled the bauble down had not the stout burghers 
of Capri stept in alarmed, and bought it for fifty thousand 
pieces of gold. They have turned the place to all manners 
of wonderful and incongruous uses. They have concerts there, 
balls where ladies can dance without having first been presented 
at court, and where lords in blue ribbons are never to be seen. 
They have exhibitions of pictures and photographs. They have 
had a circus there ; yes, a circus where spotted horses dance, 
and M. Desarais' dogs and monkeys bark and chatter, and 
Mr. Merryman, with his painted face, tumbles in the sawdust ! 
Pale men in spectacles come from Clapham to Capri to lecture 
on the Od. Force. I have seen there, myself, exhibiting, two 
wretched black deformities of children — the Caribbean twins, 
or some such monstrosities — hawked round the room by a gar- 
rulous showman. I do not despair of seeing, some day, at the 
gate of the Pagoda a Beifeater inviting the bystanders to walk 
in and see the Podasokus, or the " Whiffie Whaffle," or Oozly 
Bird, which, as is well known, digs a hole in the sand with his 
beak, and whistles through the nape of his neck. The parochial 
authorities have offices in the Pagoda, where ihey give out quar- 
tern loaves and orders of relief, and pass destitute hop-pickers 
to Ireland. The sentry-boxes, in front of which gold-braided 
hussars used to pace, keeping watch and ward over the sove- 
reign within, are boarded up. Irreverent boys have chalked 
denunciations of the Pope, and libels on the police authorities, 



248 Dutch Pictures. 

on the boards. They have quartered militiamen in the riding- 
school — that stately expanse where all the king's satin-skinned 
horses used to be exercised by all the king's scarlet-coated 
grooms. They have substituted a railing for the wall that used 
to veil the mysteries of Capri from the vulgar, and now every 
flyman on the S. can see the palace in its entirety. They have 
thrown open the gardens, and the rustic seats are now the 
resting-places of nursery-maids and valetudinarians, while the 
wheels of patent perambulators and the heels of the shoes of 
the plebeian children, craunch the gravel which once resounded 
with the tread of kings and princes, marchionesses and minis- 
ters of state. Placards relative to the concerts and balls, 
the dogs and monkeys, and the twins, the Courier of St. 
Petersburg, and the next town-rate of twopence in the pound, 
flank the portals where yeomen on the guard have stood. 
They have dismantled the great entrance-gate, and it is as free 
of ingress to the pauper as all doors are to Death. I remem- 
ber when I used to regard that gate with awe and wonder, 
and watch the royal carriage, with its brilliant outriders 
disappear through it, with bated breath, thinking of the ineff- 
able splendour, the untold gorgeofhness, the unimaginable 
luxuries, that must have their being behind those charmed doors. 
Now I pass through the gate; whistling. I smoke a cigar, con- 
trary to rule, in the royal gardens. I pay sixpence to see a 
show in the place where the great kings dwelt : where beauty 
has languished, and voluptuousness has revelled, and pride has 
said to itself, " I can never die." I pay sixpence, and sit in 
my high-lows, in the rooms where investitures have been held, 
kuighthood conferred, treaties concocted, peace and war pro- 
claimed, death-warrants signed. Twenty years ago, how many 



The Met amor phofed Pagoda. 249 

a millionaire's wife would have given her ears to be invited to 
the Pagoda '? Now I invite myself, and my wife thinks the 
room but shabby. 

I see breakers a-head that betoken the squall of a sermon* 
The subject is too enticing. Only this I must say : If any 
divine wishes to preach a sermon upon vanity and emp- 
tiness, and the mutability of earthly things, let him make 
haste and come here, and take the Pagoda of Capri for a 
text. 

Out on the S., facing the Pagoda, the idol-worshippers 
erected some years ago a statue of their idol. It was, I be- 
lieve, originally cast in bronze ; but either neglect or the 
saline quality of the atmosphere, or some yet more mysterious 
agent, has converted it into the mournfulest, rustiest, most 
verdigrised old marine-store you ever saw. This is Georgius — 
but ah ! how changed from him ! The ambrosial wig seems 
out of curl. The fine features are battered and worn away — 
the royal nose has especially suffered. The classic drapery 
hangs in dingy folds, like the garments of a lean and slippered 
pantaloon. Fuit, fait, fuit is written everywhere. On dark 
winter's nights, when the sea moans fitfullest, and the wind 
howls among' the Moorish chimney-pots of the Pagoda, and 
the rain whips the pedestal, I can imagine this statue animated 
by a ghost, and the ghost wringing its bronzed hands and 
crying, " Walla ! Walla ! Dogs and monkeys, Caribbean twins 
and clowns, in the house where I have waltzed with Jersey and 
gambled with Hertford ; where I have entertained Polignac, 
and made PlatofT tipsy ; where I have suffered princesses to 
kiss my hand, and said to sheriffs, 'Arise, Sir John;' where 
I compounded my inestimable recipe for Champagne-punch 3 



250 Dutch Piclures. 

mixed my world-famous Begent's-snuff, and cut out my im- 
mortal white kid pantaloons ! " Alas, poor ghost ! 

I meet occasionally at the Pagoda Gardens, seldom early 
or late, or in doubtful weather, but in the warmest, cheer- 
fulest, most genial portion of the day, sundry elderly bucks, 
antediluvian dandies, senile old boys, whom I cannot help 
fancying to have been habitues of the Pagoda in the heyday 
of its glory. I meet them, too, on the cliff, and other places 
of resort ; but the seedy purlieus of this palace out of elbows, 
they especially haunt. Seldom do they walk together, or 
converse in groups. The Sphinx is solitary. Marius had 
no companion when he sat among the ruins of Carthage. 
Trotting, or toddling, or creeping,\or hobbling, or slinking 
along, shall you see these damaged fops, these battered and 
bygone beaux. The fur-collar, the hat with raised brim, 
and body curved slightly inward, the double eye-glass, the 
tightly-strapped trousers, and peaked high-heeled boots, tell- 
ing of padded calves and bunions ; the occasionally braided, 
always tightly buttoned surtout, the never-failing umbrella, 
the high satin stock, the curly wig, or purple-dyed whiskers, 
the thousand crowsfeet on the face, the tired, parboiled eye, 
weeping because its owner is too vain to allow it the aid of 
spectacles ; the mouth, full of evidence of what a capital pro- 
fession dental surgery must be in Capri ; the buck-skin gloves, 
the handkerchief peeping from the breast-pocket, the oft- 
produced snuffbox, the cough, the scintillating suspicions of 
stays, and sciatica, and rheumatism, and paralysis— these 
are the most noteworthy exterior characteristics of the old 
beau types I meet in the Gardens. They creep about in the 
sunshine, tottering over their old shadows, that seem like 



The Met amor phofed Pagoda, 251 

guides, showing thein the way to the grave. Now I meet them 
elbowed by the noisy, healthful, pleasure-seeking throngs by 
the sea ; now they crouch in the corners of Mr. Thruppell's 
subscription reading-rooms ; blinking over the newspapers — 
during which operation you may hear as many as forty dis- 
tinct wheezes and coughs in the course of one forenoon. 
When it is cold, they come abroad in cloaks and comforters, 
but are loath to lose an hour's sunshine. Nobody seems to 
invite them to dinner j you do not meet them in society, or 
at theatres or concerts. Even in church time on Sunday they 
crawl about the shiny streets. They never ride ; they never 
venture on the beach, or bathe. When they are too old and 
feeble to walk, they subside into Bath-chairs, and are dragged 
about the Esplanade to pass the time till Mr. Tressel's men 
have finished harnessing the black horses to the carriage, and 
Doctor Bolus is satisfied that he will get no more fees. 
Who are they — these poor old boys ? Alas ! may they not 
have been the strong men who lived before Agamemnon came 
into babyhood ? These fur-collared spectres lingering about 
the scenes of their former triumphs, like a dog about the 
grave of his master who is dead : these, vain and forward 
youth, were once the gallant and the gay in that prouder 
alcove than Cliefden's — they were the mimic statesmen who 
circled the merry king that built Capri. They are old and 
broken now ; but the days have been when they have seen 
the Eegent bow, and Mtzherbert smile, and d'Artois dance. 
— when they have heard Sheridan laugh, and Brummell jest, 
They have seen the tawdy rooms of the Pagoda all blazing 
with light, and splendour, and beauty, — upon the orders of 
the men, and the jewels of the women. They have seeia 



252 Dutch PicJures* 

Sardanapalus, Tiberius, Heliogabalus, Augustus— which you 
will — disporting himself at Capri. They know of the humours 
of the wild Prince and Poins. They have heard Captain 
Morris sing. They have known George Hanger. Are any 
such extant ? you ask. I seem to think so when I meet these 
ancient dandified men — these crippled invalids from the cam- 
paign of vanity, where the only powder was hair-powder, and 
the only bullets fancy balls. 

But Capri is no longer royal. The old dandies, the meta- 
morphosed Pagoda, and the marine-store statue are the only 
relics left to point out that Capri was once the sojourn of 
royalty. Stay ; there is a Chapel Royal, with the lion and the 
unicorn on red velvet within, but it is elbowed by a printing" 
office, and stared out of countenance by a boot-shop. I for one 
(and I am one, I hope, of many thousands) do not regret the 
withdrawal of the Royal patronage. I have an intense dislike 
to towns royal or semi-royal. Don't you know how people in 
Dublin bore you about " the Kyastle.*' In Windsor, however 
loyal a man may be, he is apt to be driven mad by the inter- 
minable recurrence of portraits, not only of the royal family 
— Heaven bless them !-r-but of their dependants, hangers-on, 
and Teutonic relatives. The cobbler who vamps your boots, 
the chandlery shopkeeper who sells you a ha'porth of twine is 
sure to be " purveyor to her Majesty and the Duchess of Kent," 
and you ean scarcely take a chop in a coffee-room without a 
suspicion that the man in the next box, with the aristocratic 
whiskers and heavy gold-chain, may be one of the royal foot- 
men in disguise. Versailles is one of the dreariest, dullest, 
dearest, most stuck-up places I know ; though it has but the 
very shadow of a shade of royalty to dwell upon ; Hampton 



The Met amor phofed Pagoda. 253 

Court is poor, purse-proud, and conceited ; Potsdam, I know, 
is slow and solemn, ; and Pimlico, I have heard, is proud. 
The disfranchisement of Capri, as a royal borough, was the 
making of the place. " Dire thoughts of ruin, bankruptcy, 
grass growing in the streets, or emigration to Dieppe, sacred 
the inhabitants at first. But they were soon undeceived. The 
aristocracy continued their presence and patronage. They 
liked Capri, now royalty was gone, as a breathing-place. 
Perhaps, too, they liked a little being royalty themselves. 
The easy middle-classes came down, brought their wives and 
families with them, and took houses. By and by, a trunk- 
railway with numerous branches was started, and that won- 
derful personage Mr. Yox Populi came down, bag and bag- 
gage, — Briareus, Argus, Hydra, welded into one. He brought 
his wife and children with him. Finally, schools multiplied, 
and doctors disseminated themselves and differed. 

Schools ! Capri swarms with them. The moral tenets, in- 
culcated there in bygone days, were not precisely of a nature to 
render their introduction into copybooks, as texts, advisable ; 
but time has purified the naughty place, and the town is now 
all over targets, at which the young idea is taught to shoot 
from the quiver of geography, and the use of the globes, — 
dancing, deportment, and moral culture. There are ladies' 
schools of the grimmest and most adult status ; schools where 
the elder pupils are considerably bigger than the schoolmis- 
tress; which locate in tremendous stucco mansions in the vast 
squares at the east-end of the town, and which are attended 
by music-masters with the fiercest of moustachios, and 
language-masters with long red beards and revolutionary- 
hats, and dancing-masters who come in broughams, and 



254 Dutch Pictures. 

masters of gymnastics, deportment, and calisthenics, who 
have been colonels, even generals, in the armies of foreign 
potentates. To see these schools parade upon the cliff is a 
grand sight, driving solemn London dandies and dashing 
Lancer officers to desperation, and moving your humble servant 
to the commission of perhaps the only folly of which he has 
not as yet been guilty : — the composition of amatory verses in 
the terza rima. They are too pretty, they are too old to be 
at school; they ought to be Mrs. Somebodies, and living in 
a villa at Brompton. Strict discipline is observed in these 
grown-up schools ; and I have heard that though Signor 
Papadaggi, the singing-master, and Mr. Stargays, the lecturer 
on astronomy, must know, necessarily, every pupil they 
attend, by sight, the young ladies are instructed, whenever' 
they meet their male instructors in public, by no means to 
acknowledge their salutations, but to turn their heads — 
seaward — immediately. This they do simultaneously, as 
soldiers turn their eyes right, to the great comfort and moral 
delectation of the schoolmistress, whose axiom it is, that 
men-folk are of all living things the most to be avoided : — 
which is sometimes also my opinion, Eugenius. 

There are long-tailed ladies' schools, whose pupils average 
from sixteen to six, blocking up every pathway. You cannot 
pass down a by-street without hearing pianos industriously 
thrummed, to the detriment of Messrs. Meyerbeer, Thalberg, 
and Chopin, but to the ultimate benefit of the music-sellers 
and the piano-forte manufacturers. Brass plates abound ; 
and that terrible epidemic, the collegiate system of female 
education, has declared itself virulently. Saline Parade Col- 
lege for Ladies, Prince Eegency Square Ladies' Collegiate 



The Metamorphofed Pagoda. 255 

Institute, Hemp Town Academical Gymnasium for Young 
Ladies, conducted on Collegiate Principles, — what sham 
next ? I marvel what they are like — these ladies' colleges ? 
Have they any affinity to the old young ladies' school ? — the 
Misses Gimp, stiff and starched, the subdued English teacher, 
the snuffy French governess, the stocks, the backboard, the 
pinafores, the bread and butter, and the French mark ? Or 
do the young ladies wear trencher caps and black gowns. 
Do they go to chapel in surplices, and fudge impositions, and 
have wine parties, and slang bargees, and cap proctors, and 
sport their oak? Are they rusticated if they are naughty? 
Are they ever plucked for their little-go ? I should like to 
see a young lady plucked for her little-go. 

As for the boys' schools, their name begins with an L and 
ends with an N. Plenty of colleges of course; Eeverend 
Doctors, M.A.'s, Graduates of the university, willing to take 
charge of, &c, Gentlemen who have devoted some years to 
the instruction of, &c, Clergymen most anxious to recom- 
mend an, &c, Capri is one huge trap hung with toasted 
cheese, and the poor little boy-mice are caught in it inces- 
santly. It is good to see the little lads disporting themselves 
on the beach, or at cricket in the fields, or filing along the 
cliff, two and two, in every variety of cap and jacket, looking 
lovingly in at the pastrycooks.' I should like to have boys 
at school at Capri, that I might come down on Saturday, and 
tip them, and give them tarts at Button's. Yet there are 
some boys I see in these scholastic processions, who make me 
melancholy. Fatherless boys ; boys with dark eyes whose 
parents are far away in burning India, and who have found 
but a hard step-school-father in Doctor Spanker. They have 



265 Dutch Pictures. 

an ugly habit too, of sending sick boys to school at Capri — 
poor pale-faced children, who limp wearily on crutches after 
the healthful crew, or are drawn along in the wake of the 
young band in invalid-chairs, all muffled up in shawls and 
bandages, and gaze, ah ! so wistfully, at the gambolling 
children and caracoling horses, and come here to be doctored 
and taught — to learn their lessons — and die. 

The College of Physicians, the Royal College of Surgeons, 
the Company of Apothecaries, the Faculty of Homceopathists ; 
the confraternity of Hydro pathists, the Hygeian heretics, or 
College of Health-Arians, the great Professorial guild of Pill 
and Ointment vendors ; nay, even the irregular Cossacks of 
medical science — the Bardolphs, Nyms, and Pistols of Field- 
Marshal Sangrado's army — rubbers, scrapers, counter-irrita- 
tors, pitch-plaisters, brandy-and-salt dosers, and similar free 
lances of physics — known sometimes, I believe, by the generic 
name of quacks — all these flourish at Capri, a very forest of 
green bay-trees, and wax exceeding rich. For there are so 
many really sick people who come to this Capri in search of 
health, that the convalescent natives, perhaps in deference to 
their visitors, perhaps by that contagious fancy which leads 
people to throw themselves off the Monument, and write 
five-act tragedies, and start newspapers, straightway either 
imagine that they have something the matter with them, 
and call in the doctor forthwith, or feel that the mantle 
of iEsculapius has descended upon their shoulders; and, 
purchasing a second-hand mortar and half-a-dozen globular 
bottles, set up as doctors on their own account. To be a 
doctor, or to be doctored, are the two conditions of existence 
at Capri. When a man hasn't a bad leg of his own, he be- 



The Metamorphofed Pagoda. 257 

thinks him of his next-door neighbour, who has one of fifteen 
years' standing, and insists upon curing it. Come to Capri, 
and you shall at length know who are the purchasers of Pro- 
fessor Swalloway, and Professor Methusaleh, and Doctor 
Druggem and Widow Wobble's pills ; who are the persons 
that invest capital in old Doctor Isaac Laquedem's Tonic of 
Timbuctoo, and Messrs. Mullygrubbs' medicated ginger-beer, 
and Madame de Pompadour's farinaceous food ; and how the 
patentees of those inestimable medicines acquire colossal 
fortunes. In the stream of equipages in the streets, the 
doctors' sly brougham spots the gay procession like pips on 
an ivory domino. Call on your rich aunt ; you are almost 
sure to meet the dentist coming in, or the chiropodist coming 
out, or Mr. Wollop the great gymnastic doctors' carriage (lie 
makes five thousand a-year by kneading people's joints, and 
cannot spell) at the door. In the remote slums of Capri (for 
even Capri has slums), in tarry little by-lanes and fishy 
hovels, where barricades of seines and nets hung out to dry 
impede the passage, and the little children toddle about in 
bucket-boots and sou' -wester hats, you may discover, grizzling 
over saucepans or mumping on patchwork counterpanes, pre- 
posterous old women in pea-jackets and Welsh-wigs, always 
infirm, often bed-ridden — magging, obstinate, superstitious, 
ignorant crones — who yet possess wonderful reputations as 
doctoresses, and are the holders of dire medicaments ; grim 
recipes, " as was took by his blessed Majesty for the 
innards," and warranted to work marvellous cures. They 
cannot read or write, these ancient ladies ; they moan in their 
own .sick-beds, and dun the parish surgeon for doctor's stuff; 
yet they cure all bodily complaints of others. Solemn house- 



258 Dutch Piclures. 

keepers come to Cod's Head Alley or Hard Eoe Lane, sent 
by the Marchioness of Capri, to consult these old women. If 
they cannot cure, at least they have the consolation of know- 
ing that they thwart the regular physician, and counteract 
the effect of his medicines, and render his guinea-visit null 
and void. Do I call people simpletons for running after 
quacks here at Capri or throughout the mortal world ? No — 
not I. How do we know — what do we know ? Goody Fish- 
bone's salted roe of a herring, beaten up in a glass of rhubarb 
and gin, and swallowed fasting, may do us good. A man 
believes in quacks, as he believes in ghosts ; and how many 
of the wisest of ns have spectres at our bed's-foot every mid- 
night in the year ? 

Lest quackery, however, left to itself, should quite cure 
— or kill — Capri out of hand, it is but justice to remember that 
it is the dwelling-place of very many learned and accom- 
plished physicians and surgeons — men whose long lives have 
been spent not only in the ardent pursuit of knowledge and 
science, but also in doing good to their fellow-creatures 
— in healing not only hurts but hearts ; and who glorify- 
by their charity the profession which by their talents they 
adorn. 

Ought I to say anything of the reverend profession in 
Capri ? Shall I be impertinent in lightly touching on themes 
ecclesiastical ? Would not, moreover, a paraphrase of that 
which I have said of the doctors serve also for the clergy ? 
For there are doctors and doctors, and there are parsons and 
parsons. Orthodox ecclesiastics — good, pious, charitable, 
unostentatious men, doing acts of mercy by stealth ; Christian 
priests of every denomination, labouring heartily in their 



The Met amor phofed Pagoda. 259 

vocation, and earning their reward. And there are also the 
irregular Cossack corps, the sellers of pious pills, and holy 
ointments, and polemical plaisters — braying Boanerges, 
cushion-thumpers — men who jump, and howl, and rave, and 
throw their arms about, and pipe all hands to repentance as 
violently and hoarsely as boatswains. When I hear the 
Beverend Mr. Tinklesimble, who is wonderfully eloquent, but 
a comb for whose hair and soap for whose face are decidedly 
(under correction) desiderata — when I hear Mr. Tinklesimble 
lecture upon the Beast in the Pit, and the Seventh Vial, and 
the Crystal Sea, proving by word and gesture, plainly though 
involuntarily, that the study of the Apocalypse hath found 
him mad or left him so ; when in twenty other streets and 
chapels I hear reverend lunatics gnashing in their padded 
rooms — I mean pulpits — I am content to pass them by: 
what would animadversion upon them have to do with Capri, 
though they dwell there ? Are they not common to every 
nation and every creed, and to all humanity ? 

Ecclesiastical architecture is of much account in Capri, 
Tall steeples point upwards like the tall chimneys of Preston, 
telling of extensive factories of grace. Gothic and Corinthian, 
Saxon and Byzantine — of every style are these fanes. Yet do 
I seem to miss a church on a hill I loved twenty years syne : 
it was the parish church of Capri, when Capri was yet but In 
the hundred of Herringbone, a poor fishing hamlet. The old 
church, the natives affectionately called it ; that ancient, grey, 
shingled, moss-grown edifice, with its carved porch and lazy 
sun-dial. How many, many times when a boy I have played 
among the green graves, or sat and gazed in childish contem- 
plation at the town beneath, and the blue sea rising straight 

s 2 



260 Dutch Pictures. 

up at the sky as though to engulph it ; or spelt over the 
inscription on the tomb of the brave sea-captain who took the 
fugitive Charles the Second over to France after the battle of 
Worcester, and of that famous old woman who fought in male 
attire at Blenheim, and Ramilies, and Malplaquet, all through 
the wars of Queen Anne, and who died when she was more 
than a hundred years of age, pensioned by the king of 
Capri. 

But the clergy, the doctors, the schools, the aristocracy, 
all of the proudest features of Capri, culminate on her boule- 
vards, the Cliff. 

The stones of the Paris boulevards and my feet are 
brothers ; I know the gardens of the palace at Lacken ; I 
have walked Unter den Linden, and toiled up the Grande 
Rue of Pera. I have yet to lounge on the Toledo and the 
Quay Santa Lucia ; to smoke a cigarette at the Puerta del 
Sol ; to inhale the evening breeze on the Pincian Hill ; to buy 
sweetmeats on the Ponte Vecchio at Florence, or bargain for 
a yard of Venice gold -chain on the Rialto at Venice. Regent 
Street is familiar to me, likewise RatclifYe Highway ; yet I 
question if any public promenade the wide world through be as 
pleasant, gay, and picturesque as the Cliff at Capri. The 
footpath is so narrow, to begin with ; the throng is so thick, 
the people so well dressed ; they look so happy ; there is so 
much youth. There are so many smiles. The very com- 
merce is light-hearted and picturesque ; jewellery, shells, 
fancy walking canes, toys, curiosities, French kid-gloves, 
bonnets and feathers, hot-house fruits and flowers, gay 
lithographs, gift-books, albums and church-services bound 
in velvet and gold. None but the amenities of trade find 



The Met amor phofed Pagoda. 261 

stalls in this gay mart. The bagatelle is triumphant. Vive 
la bagatelle ! 

If you are unmarried, unhappy, poor, and have no friends, 
but are withal of a cheerful temperament, and unenvious of 
tlie prosperity of others, it is balm to your wounded spirit to 
walk here on a breezy morning or sunny autumn evening, 
gliding silently but observantly among the motley, careless 
crowd. Hundreds of little histories you may weave for your- 
self, and not one tragic one among them. Here are sweet- 
hearts, young couples on their wedding tour, bluff papas of 
stock-broking tendencies, who have come express from Capel 
Court to take their young families out walking ; stout 
mammas in gorgeous silks and bonnets, like a page out of 
Mr. Audubon's natural history book. Here are delicious 
young ladies blushing to find from the admiring eyes of 
passers-by how pretty they are ; here are wonderful foreigners, 
whose mustachios, braiding, and mosaic jewellery, would do 
honour to Verrey's, or the Cafe Cardinal, and who, disgusted 
at the turpitude of the Austrian government, the tyranny of 
the French Emperor, and the tergiversation of the King of 
Prussia, have come to Capri as to another Patmos • and are 
not too proud to teach German verbs, and " Do, re, mi, fa, 
sol," for a livelihood. If you have a becoming British reve- 
rence for the Peerage of your country, and for its governing 
classes, who have done you so much good, you will feel a 
thrill of pride and gratification when your garments are posi- 
tively brushed on the cliff by the sweeping silken robes of 
peeresses in their own right, and the coat-lappets of heredi- 
tary legislators. 

You meet everybody on the cliff at Capri. The Peers and 



262 Butch Pictures. 

the sweet Peeresses, and the Aldermanesses, and the Board 
of Works. Her Majesty's ministers in plaid shooting-jackets, 
bishops' wives in green " uglies," gouty old generals in wide- 
awake hats, archdeacons in waterproof coats, Israelitish mil- 
lionnaires (very strong is the wealthy Caucasian element at 
Capri : it dwelleth at Hemp Town in five-storied mansions : 
it goeth to town in the morning and returneth to dinner by 
express ; grand dinner parties giveth it to the tribe of Ben- 
jamin, and of Moses, and of Levi ; handsome daughters with 
ringed fingers hath it, and, curiously, it seems to be continu- 
ally buying fruit in the market), little city gents, honest florid 
tradesmen and their families, young dandies, used-up men, 
fast men, slow men ; fellows of their colleges, from Cambridge, 
in spectacles ; blooming, busy lawyers, with great shirt-frills 
and watch-chains ; leaders of circuit, in very shabby trousers, 
with wig-powder yet on their coat-collars, and moving the 
sea for a rule to show cause why they should not force a 
transient flush of health into their pallid, tired counten- 
ances. 

Have I forgotten — no, but I have as yet omitted to men- 
tion — two of the strongest classes, and the most constant in 
their attendance on the cliff. I allude to the canine pets, and 
the round hats. Every variety of lapdog may you see, 
philosopher, in this pretty paradise of puppies. The fat, 
plethoric, wheezy, long-eared, lolling-tonguecl, door-mat of a 
dog, with a pink ribbon round his apoplectic neck, and legs 
so short that their existence is almost imperceptible. This 
animal as surely belongs to the Dowager Lady Booterstown, 
in the peerage of Ireland, as yonder yelping rat-like terrier— 
or, perhaps, more like a rat that has stolen and caparisoned 



The Met amor phofed Pagoda. 263 

liimself in a porcupine's panoply — belongs to the austere old 
gentleman with the nonconformist countenance, who clutches 
his umbrella as though he were going to beat somebody with 
it : to this dog enters your silky Blenheim spaniel, a lazy little 
cub, but victorious often in his passive obstinacy, turning over 
on his back, sticking out his short legs, and, with his head on 
one side, humorously defying all the efforts of strenuous foot- 
page, and despairing young lady, although armed with the 
poke-inflicting parasol, to make him move on. Then comes 
mincing along daintily, as though he had patent leather boots 
on, Monsieur Caniche — your French poodle, curled, shaven, 
trimmed, pink-nosed, and redolent of Naples soap. And after 
him, ambling, but shivering piteously in his plaid paletot, 
Signor Lungoshanko, the Italian greyhound. And, sometimes 
— the sight is not often seen by human eyes, but is manifest 
occasionally — comes there sweeping along the cliff some 
dowager of ancient days, bearing in her arms the Lost Book 
of Livy, the ultimus Romanorum, the Vinegar Bible, the 
Samothracian Onagra, the blue diamond, the black swan, the 
pearl beyond price of dog-hood — the Dutch Pug: — you see his 
coffee-coloured coat, his moist, short, black nose, his snarling 
little molars for a moment, and tremble. He departs like a 
vision, and you ask the wailing ocean, where you may see 
such another dog, alive. 

I should like to linger a great while longer on the cliff 
at Capri, but my time is come, and to other penal servitude 
I must betake myself. You have heard nothing as yet of the 
famous pier at Capri, of the pretty horsewomen, of the bold 
riding-masters, of the stalwart bathing women, of the doughty 
Capri tradesmen. All these things you shall hear some day, 



264 



Dutch Pictures. 



if you are inclined, and time will serve ; likewise of the first 
mayor of Capri, and now all the town-councillors wanted to 
be aldermen, and how all the aldermen wanted to be mayor, 
and failing, each and every of them in the attainment of that 
high office, moved votes of censure upon everybody, and 
played the very deuce with the town of the Metamorphosed 
Pagoda. 




XVII. 

THE LAND OF NOD, A KINGDOM OF RECONCILED 
IMPOSSIBILITIES. 



THEEE is a kingdom whose boundaries are within the 
reach of every man's hand, on whose frontiers no 
heavier entrance-tribute or import-duty is exacted save that 
comprised in the payment of two-score inflections of the 
eyelids — or forty winks ; a kingdom into which the majority 
of humanity travel at least once in every twenty-four hours ; 
though the exact time — the precise moment — at which that 
voyage is commenced is not, and never has been, known to any 
man alive. Whether we are transported by some invisible 
agency — on the wings of spirits or in the arms of genii — 
whether we go to the kingdom or the kingdom comes to us, 
we cannot tell. Why or how or when we came there we know 
not; yet, almost invariably, when the tribute of the forty 
winks has been duly paid, we find ourselves wandering in the 
Land of Nod — the Kingdom of Reconciled Impossibilities. 

Locomotion in this kingdom is astonishingly rapid : we 
run without moving and fly without wings. Time and space 
are counted zeros ; centuries are skipped at a bound ; conti- 
nents and oceans are traversed without an effort. We are 
here, there, and everywhere. Grey-headed men, we are little 



266 Dutch Pictures. 

boys at school, breaking windows and dreading the vindic- 
tive cane. Married and settled, we are struggling through 
the quickset hedges of our first love. Crippled, we race and 
leap; blind, Ave see. Unlearned, we discourse in strange 
tongues and decipher the most intricate of hieroglyphics. 
Unmusical, we play the fiddle like Paganini. We pluck fruit 
from every branch of the tree of knowledge ; the keys of 
every science hang in a careless bunch at our girdle ; we are 
amenable to no laws ; money is of no account ; Jack is as 
good as his master; introductions are not required for 
entrance into polite society ; the most glaring impossibilities 
are incessantly admitted, taken for granted, and reconciled. 
Whence the name of this kingdom. 

Much more wondrous and full of marvels is it than the 
famed land of Cockaigne, than the country of Prester John, 
than the ground of Tom Tidier (whose occupation is now 
gone in consequence of the discovery of rival grounds in 
California and Australia), than Raleigh's Dorado, than the 
Arcadia of Strephon and Corydon, Celia, and Sacharissa; 
than the fearful country where there are men 

" whose heads 

Do grow beneath their shoulders," 

than even the mirabolant land that Jack saw when he had 
gotten to the top of the beanstalk. The only territorial 
kingdom that I can compare it to is one — and even the 
duration of that one is fleeting and evanescent, appearing 
only for a season, like specks upon the sun or the floating 
islands in Windermere — visible and to be travelled in from 
the end of December to the end of the following February, 
called the Kingdom of Pantomime. This kingdom, which, 



The Land of Nod. 267 

at other seasons of the year, is almost as rigorously barred 
and closed against strangers as China or Japan or the Stock 
Exchange, offers many points of resemblance to the Kingdom 
of Eeconciled Impossibilities. There is a voyager therein, 
one Clown, who, with Pantaloon, his friend and dupe and 
scapegoat, dances about the streets, insults and beats respect- 
able shopkeepers, swindles and robs ready furnished lodgings, 
leers at virtuous matrons, commits burglaries and larcenies 
in the broad day (or lamp) light, and perpetrates child- 
murders by the dozen, yet goes "unwhipp'd of justice:" 
nay, he and his confederate are rewarded, at last, by an ova- 
tion of fireworks and revolving stars ; as are also Harlequin, 
a prancing scapegrace in a spangled jerkin and hose, and a 
dancing girl they call Columbine ; who together play such 
fantastic tricks before the footlights as make the gallery roar 
— such tricks as would be tolerated nowhere but in a King- 
dom of Impossibilities. For in all other kingdoms, theft of 
fish or sausage — be it even the smallest gudgeon or an in- 
finitesimal saveloy — is three months' incarceration at least, 
and robbery in a dwelling-house is felony ; and to force a 
respectable white-bearded man with a crutch stick and an 
impediment in his speech to cast involuntary sommersaults, 
and to make him sit down oftener on a hard surface than he 
wishes, is an assault punishable by fine and imprisonment ; 
while the cutting up, mutilating, smothering, or thrusting 
into a letter-box of a baby is Murder. 

In all other kingdoms, likewise, as we are well aware, 
vice is always vanquished and virtue rewarded — ultimately ; 
but in the Kingdom of Eeconciled Impossibilities, as well as 
in that of Pantomime, nothing of the kind takes place. In 



268 Dutch Pictures, 

this former one, innocent, we are frequently condemned to 
death, or to excruciating tortures. Masters, we are slaves ; 
wronged and oppressed, we are always in the wrong and the 
oppressors. Though in the every day kingdom we are per- 
haps wealthy, at least in easy circumstances, we are in the 
Bealms of Impossibility perpetually in difficulties. ■ Moments 
of inexpressible anguish we pass, from the want of some 
particular object or the non-remembrance of some particular 
word ; though what the object or the word may be, we never 
have and never had the remotest idea. Spectres of duties 
omitted, ghosts of offences committed, sit at banquets with 
us ; and, under circumstances of the greatest apparent gaiety 
and joviality, we are almost always in sore perturbation of 
mind and vexation of spirit. 

The kingdom, indeed, is full of tribulations, impossible 
yet poignant. Frequently, when we attempt to sing, our 
voice dies away in an articulate murmur or a guttural gasp. 
If we strive to run, our legs fail under us ; if we nerve our 
arm to strike, some malicious influence paralyses our muscles, 
and the gladiator's fist falls as lightly as a feather; yet, 
powerless as we are, and unable to beat the knave who has 
wronged us, we are ourselves continually getting punched 
on the head, beaten with staves, gashed with swords and 
knives. Curiously, though much blood flows, and we raise 
hideous lamentations, we do not suffer much from these hurts. 
Frequently we are killed— shot dead — decapitated ; yet we 
walk and talk shortly afterwards, as Saint Denis is reported 
to have done. Innumerable as the sands of the sea are the 
disappointments we have to endure in the Kingdom of Im- 
possibilities. Get up as early as we may, we are sure to 



The Land of Nod. 269 

miss the train ; the steamboat always sails without us ; if 
we have a cheque to get cashed, the iron-ribbed shutters of 
the bank are always up, when our cab drives to the door, 
and somebody near us always says, without being asked, 
" Stopped payment !" All boats, carriages, beasts of burden 
and other vehicles and animals, behave in a similar tantalising 
and disappointing maimer ; tall horses that we drive or ride, 
change unaccountably into little dogs, boats split in the 
middle, coaches rock tip and down like' ships. We walk for 
miles without advancing a step, we write for hours without 
getting to the end of a page, we are continually beginning 
and never finishing, trying and never achieving, searching and 
never finding, knocking and never being admitted. 

The Kingdom of Impossibilities must be the home of 
Ixion, and the Danaides, and Sisyphus, and peculiarly of 
Tantalus. The number of tubs we are constantly filling, and 
which are never full ; and the quantities of stones which, as 
soon as we have rolled them to the top of a hill, roll down 
again, are sufficiently astonishing : but it is in a tantalizing 
point of view that the kingdom is chiefly remarkable. We 
are for ever bidden to rich banquets — not Barmecide feasts, 
for the smoking viands and generous wines are palpable to 
sight and touch. But, no sooner are our legs comfortably 
under the mahogany, than a something far more teazing and 
vexatious than the ebony wand of Sancho's physician sends 
the meats away untasted, the wines unquaffed, changes the 
venue to a kingdom of realities. Dear me ! When I think 
of the innumerable gratuitous dinners I have set down to in 
the Land of Impossibilities, of the countless eleemosynary 
spreads to whiah, with never a dime in my pocket, I have been 



270 Dutch Pictures. 

made welcome, — of the real turtle, truffled turkeys, Strasbourg 
pies, and odoriferous pine apples that have tempted my 
appetite, — of the unhandsome manner in which I have been 
denied the enjoyment of the first spoonful of soup, and of 
the rude and cavalier process by which I have been suddenly 
transported to another kingdom where I am usually expected 
to pay for my dinner — when I think of these things, I could 
weep. s 

Sometimes, though rarely, the riders of the Impossible 
Kingdom permit you to drink — provided always that you 
have tumbled (which is always your mode of entrance) into 
their domains in a desperately parched and thirsty condition. 
Cold water is the general beverage provided, and you are 
liberally allowed to drink without cessation — to empty water- 
jugs, pitchers, decanters, buckets, if you choose. I have 
known men Avho have sucked a pump for days, nay, who have 
lapped gigantic quantities of the Falls of Niagara ; but the 
ruler of the Impossible Kingdom has mingled one cruel and 
malicious condition with his largesse. You may drink as much 
as you like, but you must never quench your thirst, and you 
must always wake — tumble out of the kingdom I mean — 
thirstier than you was before. 

Travelling in this strange country is mostly accomplished 
in the night season — " in thoughts from the visions of the 
night, when deep sleep falleth upon men." It is when the 
Kingdom of Life is hushed and quiescent, when the streets 
are silent, and there are none abroad but the watchers and the 
houseless, that the Kingdom of Impossibilities wakes up in 
full noise, and bustle, and activity. Yet betimes we are 
favoured with a passport for this kingdom in the broad day 



The Land of Nod. 271 

season, in the fierce summer heat, when we retire to cool 
rooms, there to pay the tribute of forty winks to the Monarch 
of the Impossible Kingdom ; when, as we travel, we can half 
discern the green summer leaves waving through our trans- 
lucent eyelids, — can hear the murmuring of fountains, and the 
singing of birds, in the kingdom we have come from. Yery 
pleasant are these day voyages, especially when we can 
drowsily hear the laughter of children playing on a lawn out- 
side. 

The Kingdom of Eeconciled Impossibilities is a land of 
unfulfilled promises, of broken engagements, of trees for 
ever blossoming but never bearing fruit, of jumbles of 
commencements with never a termination among them, of 
prefaces without a finis, of dramas never played out. The 
unities are not observed in this kingdom. There are a great 
many prologues, but no epilogues. It is all as it should not 
and cannot be. It snows in July, and the dog-days are in 
January. Men sneeze with their feet, and see with their 
thumbs, like Gargantua. The literature of the country consists 
of tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying 
nothing. The houses are all built without foundations ; they 
are baseless fabrics, which vanishing leave not a wreck behind. 
Everything in the kingdom is impossible. 

Impossible, yet reconciled. In no other land, certainly, 
are we so convinced of the truth of the axiom that " whatever 
is is right." Against our knowledge, feelings, experience, and 
convictions, against all evidence, oral or ocular, against truth, 
justice, reason, or possibility, we smilingly confess that black 
is white, that clouds are whales, that the moon is cheese. We 
know our brother to be our brother, yet, without difficulty or 



2ji Dutch Pictures. 

reluctance, we admit him to be Captain Cook. With a full 
knowledge that what we are doing can't be, we are pleasingly 
convinced that it can be, and that it is, and is right. So we 
violate all the laws of morality, and decency, and international 
justice, honesty, and courtesy, with a comfortable self- 
consciousness that it is "all right," and that we are wronging 
no one. Quakers have been known, in the Kingdom of 
Impossibilities, to lie in wait for men, and murder them ; nay, 
to have hidden the bodies in corn bins and chemists's bottles. 
Moral men have eloped with ballet dancers. Bishops have 
found themselves at the Cider Cellars. Judges of the 
Ecclesiastical Court create disturbances at the Casino, and 
have wrenched oif knockers, in company with jovial proctors, 
and fast old surrogates, about town. There was a cathedral 
verger once, in the Kingdom of Impossibilities, who refused 
a fee, there was an Irish Member without a grievance, 
there was a Chancery suit decided to the satisfaction of all 
parties. 

Good men not only become rascals, but rascals turn honest 
men in this astonishing country. Captain Mae Swindle paid 
me, only last night, the five pounds he has owed me for fifteen 
years. I saw the unjust steward render up a faultless account. 
All is not vexatious and disappointing in the Impossible King- 
dom. If it be a kingdom of unfulfilled promises, it is one of 
accomplished wishes. Sorely pressed for cash in this possi- 
ble kingdom, no sooner are we in the impossible one than the 
exact sum we wished for, chinks in golden sovereigns, rustles 
in crisp notes, mellinuously whispers in soft-paper cheques 
before our eyes, within our gladsome pockets, or our rejoicing 
fingers. We shall be able to meet the little bill ; streets are 



The Land of Nod. 273 



no longer stopped up ; the tailor shall cringe again ; Caroline 
shall have the velvet mantle trimmed with sable. Hurrah ! 
But alas ! the money of the kingdom that never can be, and 
yet always is and will be, is as treacherous and deceitful as a 
will-of-the-wisp, or an Eastern mirage ; no sooner do we 
possess it than we have it not. We wake, and the shining 
sovereigns and the rustling notes have turned into dry leaves, 
like the money paid by the magician in the Arabian Nights. 

If the kingdom (to expatiate further on its advantageous 
features) be one of tribulations and disappointments, it is also 
one of great and extended privileges. We are privileged to 
walk about unwashed, unshaven, and undressed, to clap kings 
upon the back, to salute princesses if we list, to ride blood 
horses, to fly higher than the skylark, to visit foreign lands 
without a Foreign Office passport, the reference of a banking 
firm, or the necessity of being personally known to the Foreign 
Secretary. We have the. privilege of being a great many 
people and in a great many places at one and the same time. 
We have the privilege of living our lives over again, of un- 
doing the wrongs we have done, of re-establishing our old 
companionship with the dead, and knowing their worth much 
better than we did before we lost them. 

Yes, pre-eminent and radiant stands one privilege, to the 
enjoyment of which every traveller in the land of Reconciled 
Impossibilities is entitled. He is privileged to behold the 
Dead Alive. The King of Terrors has no power in the do- 
mains of the Impossible. The dead move and speak and 
laugh, as they were wont to speak and move and laugh, in 
the old days when they were alive, and when we loved them. 
They have been dead — of course — we know it and they say 

T 



274 Dutch Piclures. 

so — but they are alive now ; and, thanks to the irresistible 
logic of the Impossible kingdom, we slightly question how. 
These visitors have no grim tales to tell, no secrets of their 
prison-house to reveal. Here, joyful and mirthful as ever, 
are the old familiar faces ; the life-blood courses warmly 
through the old friendly hands ; dead babies crow and battle 
valorously in nurses' arms; dead sweethearts smile and blush; 
dead aunts scold ; dead schoolmasters awe ; dead boon com- 
panions crack the old jokes, sing the old songs, tell the old 
stories, till we wake into the kingdom of the Possible ; and 
ah me ! the eye turns to a vacant chair, a faded miniature, a 
lock of soft hair in crumpled tissue paper, a broken toy; 
while the mind's vision recurs to a green mound, and a half 
effaced stone. 

In the regions of the Impossible there is a population 
separate, apart, peculiar ; possible nowhere but in a land of 
impossibilities. Monstrous phantasms in semi-human shape, 
horrible creations, deformed giants, dwarfs with the heads of 
beasts ; shapeless phantoms, hideous life such as the Ancient 
Mariner saw on the rotting deep. Such things pursue us 
through these regions with grinning fangs, and poisonous 
breath ; kneel on our chests ; wind their sharp talons in our 
hair; gnaw at our throats with horrid yells. And, apart 
from the every day scenes of every day life brought to the 
rednctio ad ahmrdum in the Kingdom of Impossibilities, we 
tarty betimes in chambers of horrors, in howling deserts, in 
icy caverns, in lakes of fire, in pits of unutterable darkness. 
Miserable men are they who are frequent travellers through 
these districts of the Impossible kingdom ! They may say 
with the guilty Thane — 



The Land of Nod. 



75 



" Better be with the dead, 

Whom we to gain our place have sent to peace, 
Than on the torture of the miud to lie 
In restless ecstacy." 

If you would leave such, countries unexplored, lead vir- 
tuous lives, take abundant exercise, be temperate (in the true 
sense of the word : not choosing in what, but in everything), 
and take no man's wrong to bed with thee — no, not for one 
single night. 



i 



t 2 



XVIII. 



TWENTY MILES. 



HE who travels frequently, sometimes on foot, always 
humbly, seldom unobservantly, has other and better 
opportunities, it appears to me, of forming a just notion of 
the countries he passes through than Mr. Assistant Commis- 
sioner Mac Collum, of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law, 
who scours through the land in the first class coupe of an 
express train ; holds his commission in the best sitting room 
of the best hotel ; and, after drawing his three or five guineas 
a day, scours back again, serves up an elaborate report to my 
Lords, and is in due course of time rewarded for his arduous 
services by being made Puisne Judge of Barataria, or Lieu- 
tenant-Governor of the Larboard Islands. „ 

It is astonishing how little a man may see while travelling, 
if he will only take the trouble to shut the eyes of his mind. 
The Sir Charles Coldstreams who go up to the top of Vesu- 
vius and see nothing in it; who in their ideas of Grand 
Cairo do not condescend to comprise the pyramids, but 
confine themselves to complaints of the bugs and fleas at 
Shepherd's hotel : who have no recollections of Venice, save 
that there wag no pale ale to be got there ; are not so uu- 



Twenty Miles, 277 

common a class as you may imagine. It is not always neces- 
sary for a man to be " used-up " to visit a country, and see 
nothing in it ; nay, that noble lord is not quite a rara avis, 
who, having just returned from Greece, and being asked at a 
dinner party " what he thought of Athens ? " turned to the 
valet, standing behind his chair, and calmly said, " John, 
what did I think of Athens ? " 

It was once the lot of your humble servant to travel 
twenty miles by railway, and in the depth of winter, in com- 
pany with one single traveller. The scenery through which 
we were passing was among the most beautiful in the world ; 
and in its wintry garb was so exquisitely fair, that it might 
have moved even the taciturn Mr. Short, in Captain Marryat's 
" Snarley-yow," to grow eloquent upon it. But your servant's 
companion, a hard-featured man in a railway rug, was a dumb 
dog, and made no sign. In vain did your servant try him 
upon almost every imaginable subject of conversation — the 
weather, the country, politics, the speed of the train, the am- 
biguities of Bradshaw, the electric telegraph, the number of 
stations, and the prevalence of influenza. He was mum. He 
could scarcely be silently observing and commenting upon 
the works of Nature in the landscape without, or of art in 
your servant's dress within, for he never looked out of the 
window, and kept his eyes (staringly wide awake they were) 
upon one particular check of his railway rug. He could 
scarcely have been a philosopher, looking, as he did, like a 
tub, without a Diogenes in it ; and, unless he was speculating 
upon the development of textile fabrics, or counting the 
number of pulsations of the engine to himself (I did once 
travel from Liverpool to London, two hundred and twenty 



278 Dutch Pictures. 

miles, with a gentleman whose sole occupation was in check- 
ing off the number of telegraph posts, but who, getting con- 
fused between them and a white paling, lost count at Tring, 
in Hertfordshire, and relapsed into absolute silence), his mind 
must have been a blank. At last, on a stoppage at some 
station, I remarked, desperately scraping the gelid rime from 
the carriage window, that " it froze : " whereupon, speaking 
for the first and last time, he responded solemnly, " Hard ; " 
immediately afterwards, drew from underneath the seat a 
black cow-skin travelling-bag, as hard, cold, and silent as 
himself, and slid out of the carriage. Some angular female 
drapery, surmounted by the ugliest bonnet that ever existed, 
was waiting for him on the platform; and my hard friend 
went on his way, and I saw him no more. I would rather 
not dine with him and the drapery, next Christmas day. 

Yet there is much virtue in twenty miles. Along the 
dreariest railway ; up to the loneliest turnpike road ; across 
the darkest, barrenest, rainiest sea ; there are to the observant 
twenty score of lessons in every mile of the twenty. To bring 
this enjoyment to every door, I would have all travellers 
taught to Draw. I would not insist that they should become 
proficients in Poonah painting, or that they should attend 
Professor Partridge's' lectures upon anatomy : I would not 
make it a sine qua non that they should visit Eome, and copy 
all the frescoes in the Loggie and Stanze of the Vatican ; but 
some rudimentary education in design and colour, I would 
cause to be given to every man, woman, and child (able and 
willing to learn) who intends to travel twenty miles. He who 
can draw,' be it ever so badly, has a dozen extra preference- 
shares in every landscape — shares that are perpetually paying 



Twenty Miles. , 279 

golden dividends. He can not only see the fields and the 
mountains, the rivers and the brooks, but he can eat and 
drink them. The flowers are a continual feast : and when 
the rain is on them, and after that the Sun, they may be 
washed down with richest wines, hippocras, hydromel, aqua- 
d'oro, what you will. Every painter is, to a certain extent, a 
poet ; and I would have every poet taught to paint. Charles 
Lamb asked, "why we should not say grace, and ask a bles- 
sing before going out for a walk, as before sitting down to 
dinner ? " Why should we not ? The green meat of the 
meadows is as succulent a banquet to the mind, as ever the 
accloyed Lucullus stretched himself upon his couch to devour 
To the artistic eye there are inexhaustible pleasures to be. 
found in the meanest objects. There are rich studies of colour 
in a brick wall ; of form in every hedge and stunted pollard 
of light and shade in every heap of stones on the Macadam- 
ised road ; of more than Prae-Baphaelite stippling and finish 
in every tuft of herbage and wild flowers. The shadow cast 
by a pig-stye upon a road, by an omnibus driver's reins on 
his horses' backs ; the picturesque form of a donkey cart ; the 
rags of a travelling tinker ; the drapery folds in a petticoat 
hung out to dry on the clothes' line in the back yard ; the 
rugged angularities of the lumps of coal in the grate ; the 
sharp lights upon the decanter on the table at home; all these 
are fruitful themes for musing and speculative pleasure. The 
fisherman who can draw, has ten times more enjoyment in his 
meditative pursuit than the inartistic angler. An acquain- 
tance with art takes roods, perches, furlongs from the journey; 
for however hard the ground may be ; however dreary the 
tract of country through which we journey ; though our twenty 



280 ( Dutch Pictures. 

miles may lie in the whole distance between two dead walls ; 
have we not always that giant scrap-book, the sky above us ? 
— the sky with its clouds that sometimes are dragonish ; with 
its vapours sometimes — 

" Like a bear or Hon, 

A tower'd citadel or a pendant rock, 

A forked mountain or blue promontory 
, With trees upon 't that nod unto the world, 

And mock our eyes with air," 
— the sky with all its glorious varieties of colour, its rainy 
fringes^ its changing forms and aspects ? I would not have 
a man look upon the Heavens in a purely paint-pot spirit. X 
would not have him consider every sky as merely so much 
Naples yellow, crimson lake, and cobalt blue, with flake- white 
clouds spattered over it by a dexterous movement of the 
palette-knife ; but I would have him bring an artist's eye and 
an artist's mind to the Heavens above. So shall his twenty 
miles be one glorious National Gallery of art, and every 
square plot of garden-ground a Salon Carre, and every group 
of peasant children a Grlyptothek. 

There are many many twenty miles that have left green 
memories to me, and that have built themselves obelisks sur- 
mounted by immortelles in the cemetery of my soul. Twenty 
miles through the fat green flats of Belgium, enlivened by the 
horn of the railway guard, the sour beer, the lowly pipe, the 
totally incomprehensible, but no less humorous, Low Dutch 
jokes of Flemish dames in lace caps and huge gold ear-rings, 
and bloused farmers, and greasy cures. Twenty miles through 
that heavenly garden, that delicious lake country of England, 
in the purple shadow of the great crags and fells. Twenty 
miles along the dusty roads of Picardy with the lum- 



Twenty Miles. 281 

bering diligence, the loquacious conducteur, the swift-scudding 
beggars, the long, low stone cottages, the peasantry in red 
night-caps and sabots, singeing pigs in the wide unhedged 
fields. Twenty miles along the trim English Queen's high- 
way ; on the box-seat of the Highflier coach, with the driver 
who knew so much about every gentleman's seat we passed, 
and had such prodigious stories to tell about horses present 
and past ; with the comfortable prospect of the snug hotel 
and the comfortable dinner at our journey's end. Twenty 
miles through the Kentish hop-gardens and orchards radiant 
with their spring-snow of blossoms. Twenty miles through 
the grim black country round Wolverhampton, with its red 
furnaces glaring out from the darkness like angry eyes. 
Twenty miles in a certain omnibus hired for the day, in 
which there was much shouting, much laughing, much crack- 
ing of jokes, and munching of apples ; in which there were 
twenty happy schoolboys going twenty miles to see the grand 
royal Castle of Windsor, and play cricket afterwards, in the 
royal park ; in which there was a schoolmaster so smiling, 
so urbane, so full of merry saws and humourous instances, 
that his scholars quite forgot he had a cane at home; in 
which there was a bland usher, who had brought a white 
neckcloth and a pocket Horace with him for the sake of 
appearances, but who evidently longed to cut off the tails of 
his black coat, and be a boy immediately; in which there 
was one young gentleman who thought the twenty miles the 
happiest and most glorious he had ever journeyed, and began 
to write in his mind volume the first of a romance, strictly 
historical, of which he was the hero, Windsor Castle the scene, 
and all Miss Strickland's Queens of England the heroines. 



282 Dutch Pictures. 

Yes ; and the twenty miles in that barouche of glory, 
drawn by four grey horses, with pink postboys, which dashed 
round Kennington Common about eleven in the forenoon on 
a certain Wednesday in May ; the barouche that stopped so 
long at Cheam Gate, and had a hamper strapped behind it 
containing something else besides split peas and water ; which. 
coming home had so many satiric spirits and Churchilk hither- 
to unknown to fame in it, and was so merry a barouche, so 
witty a barouche, not to say so inebriated a barouche. Ah 
me ! the miles and the minutes have glided away together. 

There dwells upon my mind a twenty miles journey that 
I once performed on foot — the dullest, most uninteresting, 
most uneventful twenty miles that ever pedestrian accom- 
plished. It was a stupid walk indeed. There was literally 
'•nothing in it;" so it is precisely for that reason (to bear 
out a crotchet I have) that I feel inclined to write a brief 
chronicle of the twenty miles I walked along the highroad 
from Lancaster to Preston. 

When was it ? Yesterday, last week, a dozen years ago ? 
Never mind. For my purpose, let it be Now ; put on your 
sparrow-bills ; gird up your loins with the blue bird's-eye 
handkerchief, dear to pedestrians, and walk twenty miles 
with me. 

It is a very threatening summer's morning. Not threat- 
ening rain or thunder ; the glass and the experience of the 
last ten days laugh that idea to scorn. But the morning 
threatens nevertheless. It threatens a blazing hot day. 
General Phoebus has donned his vividest scarlet coat, his 
brightest golden epaulettes (epaulettes were worn when I 
walked twenty miles), his sheeniest sword, his hat wdth the 



Twenty Miles. 283 

red and white cocks' feathers. He is determined upon a 
field-day, and serves out redhot shot to his bombardiers. I 
leave the grey old legendary town of Lancaster, with its 
mighty castle, its crumbling church, its steep quaint streets, 
I [leave the tranquil valley of the Lune ; the one timber- 
laden schooner, and row of dismantled warehouses which now 
represent the once considerable maritime trade of Lancaster 
(oh, city of the Mersey, erst the haunt of the longed-legged 
Liver, you have much to answer for !) ; I leave the rippling 
waters of Morecambe Bay, with its little pebbly watering- 
place of Poulton-le-Sands. I leave the blue shade of the 
mountains of Westmoreland and Cumberland ; the memories 
of Peter Bell and his solitary donkey and the white doe of 
Ehylstone ; the thousand beautiful spots in the loved district, 
sunlighted by the memories of learned Southey, and tuneful 
Wordsworth, and strong John Wilson, and gentle, docile, 
erring Hartley Coleridge (there is not a cottager from Lan- 
caster to Kendal, from Kendal to Windermere, but has 
stories to tell about " puir Hartley," affectionately recalling 
his simple face and ways) ; I leave all these to walk twenty 
miles to the town of spindles and smoke, bricks and cotton- 
bales. I can give but a woman's reason for this perverse 
walk. I will walk it. 

There is a place called Scotforth, about two miles out, 
where I begin to fry. There is a place called Catterham 
(I think) two miles further, where I begin to broil. Then 
I begin to feel myself on fire. There is a place where there 
is a merciful shadow thrown by a high bank and hedge, 
and there, in defiance of all the laws of etiquette and the 
-usages of society, I take off my coat and waistcoat, and walk 



284 Dutch Pictures. 

along with them thrown over my arm, as though I were a 
tramp. I wonder what the few people I meet think of me, 
for I am deeently attired, and have positively an all-round 
collar. How inexpressibly shocked that phaeton-full of Lan- 
castrians that has just passed me (I have a strong idea that 
I took tea with some of them last week) must be. What 
can the burly farmer in the chaise-cart who pulls up and says 
interrogatively, " teaaking a weauork ? " think. I wonder at 
all this ; but much more do I wonder where the next beer- 
oasis in this dusty desert, is. 

I had fortified myself with a good breakfast, and a 
" dobbin " of brown ale before I left Lancaster, and had 
sternly said to myself, "no beer till Garstaing," which is 
half way. But at the very cutset of my twenty miles, at 
Scotforth, I was sorely tempted to turn aside (two roads 
diverge there) towards the pleasant village of Cockerham, on 
the road to which I know of a beery nook, where there is a 
little woman, licensed to be drunk on the premises, in a tiny 
house, of which the back-door opens into a green churchyard, 
with tombstones hundreds of years old ; a little dame, who, 
though a Catholic herself, has, in her little library on the 
hanging shelf beside her missal and Thomas A'Kempis, a 
copy of " Fuller's Worthies," and Barclay's " Apology for the 
Quakers." Oh ! for a mug of brown beer at the sign of the 
Travellers' Joy. Oh ! for the sanded floor, the long clean 
pipe, the Kendal Mercury three weeks old, the " Worthies," 
the " Quakers ! " Beer and happiness ? Why not ? There 
are times when a mug of ale, a pipe, and an old newspaper 
may be the essence of mundane felicity. Get away, you 
luxurious Persians. I hate your epicurean splendours ; and, 



Twenty Miles. 285 

little boy, bind my brow with a simple hop-garland, and 
bring me some more beer. 

I did not turn off towards Cockerham, however, because 
I was ashamed. When I am on fire, however, and my 
stomach so full of hot dust, I throw shame to the winds, 
and say to resolution, " get thee behind me." (I am always 
leaving that tiresome resolution behind.) In this strait I 
meet a tinker. He is black, but friendly. He is a humourist, 
as most tinkers are, and sells prayer-books besides tin-pots, 
which most tinkers do. Straightway he knows of the where- 
abouts of beer, and proposes a libation. I accept. More 
than this, he insists upon " standing a pot." Am I to insult 
this tinker by refusing to accept his proffered hospitality? 
No ! , He and I dive down a cunning lane, which none but a 
tinker could discover, and the foaming felicity is poured out 
to us. The tinker drinks first : I insist upon his drinking 
first. When he hands me the pot he points to the side of 
the vessel on which he has himself drunk, and suggests that 
I should apply my lips to the opposite side. " My mouth it 
may be sawdery," he says. Could Lord Chesterfield, in all 
his wiggishness and priggishness, have been politer than 
this? When we get into the high road again the tinker 
sings me a Cumberland song, in which there are about nine- 
teen verses, and of which I can understand about four lines. 
I can only make out that " th' Deil's i' th' lasses o' Pearith " 
(probably Penrith), and that " Sukey, th' prood mantymecker, 
tu luik at a navvy thowt sin," which is gratifying to know, 
surveying the society of navvies (excellent persons as they 
may be in their operative way) from a genteel point of view. 
I am dimly given to understand, however, in a subsequent 



286 Dutch Piclures. 

stanza, that the haughty Sukey so far changed her opinion of 
navvies as to elope with one ; and while I ponder over this 
sad decadence, and instance of how the mighty are fallen, 
the tinker bids me good day and leaves me. He is a 
worthy man. 

There is a lull just now in the heat. General Phoebus 
has sheathed his sword for the moment, and is refreshing 
himself in his golden tent. The sky is almost colourless ; 
the trees are dark and ominous ; broad gray-green shadows 
are cast across the landscape. Perhaps, it is going to rain. 
How glad I am that I have not got an umbrella ! But the 
hope is fallacious. All at once the sudden sun darts out 
again, General Phoebus is on horseback giving the word to 
fire and reload, and I begin to fry again. 

Five miles and a half to Garstaing. Pour miles and a 
half to Garstaing — two — three — one mile to Garstaing. The 
milestones are obliging, and run on manfully before me. It 
is just one o'clock in the afternoon when I enter Garstaing 
itself; much to my own satisfaction, having attained my half- 
way house, and accomplished ten of my appointed twenty 
miles. I think I am entitled to bread and cheese at Gar- 
staing, likewise to the pipe of peace, which I take on a gate 
leading into a field, solacing myself meanwhile with a view 
of a. pas-de-deux between a young peasant woman in a jacket, 
and a lively mottled calf, which will not submit to be caught 
and bound with cords to the horns of a cart, on any terms ; 
frisking, and dodging, and scampering about, either with an 
instinctive prescience of the existence of such a thing as roast 
fillet of veal with mild stuffing, or rioting in that ignorance 
of the possibility of the shambles which is bliss to butcher's 



Twenty Miles. 287 



meat. I find Garstaing a little market town — a big village 
rather, with many public-houses, and an amazing juvenile 
population. The children positively swarm; and, musing, I 
am compelled to dissent from the moralist who asserts that 
poor men are not fond of children. It is not only the rich 
Numenius who glories in multiplying his offspring ; and 
though the days are gone when " a family could drive their 
herds, and set their children upon camels, and lead them till 
they saw a fat soil watered with rivers, and there sit them 
down without paying rent, till their own relations might 
swell up into a patriarchate, and their children be enough to 
possess all the regions that they saw, and their grandchildren 
become princes, and themselves build cities and call them by 
the name of a child and become the fountain of a nation ; " 
—though these happy patriarchal days are fled, I can never 
find any disinclination among the veriest poor to have great 
families. Bread is hard to get, God knows ; but the humble 
meal never seems scantier for a child the more or less. I 
have heard of men who thanked Heaven they had no children, 
and prayed that they might not have any ; but I never knew 
one who so misused a prayer. Far more frequently have I 
met the father mourning and refusing to be comforted for the 
loss of one of his twelve children — though that twelfth were 
the youngest, and an idiot. 

So, farewell Garstaing, and farewell temptation ; for Gar- 
staing, though small, though rural, though apparently inno- 
cent, has its temptations. It possesses a railway station ; 
and when I have finished my pipe, the train bound for Preston 
lias pulled up, and is ready to start again. I am sorely moved 
to abandon my twenty miles project, and take a second-class 



288 Butch PiBures. 

ticket for the rest of the journey. But, self-shame (the strong- 
est of all, for no man likes to look ridiculous in his own eyes), 
comes to my aid. The day seems lowering somewhat, and 
promises a cool afternoon, and I dismiss the locomotive as a 
mere figment — a puffing, drinking, smoking, superficial, in- 
consequential surface-skimmer, skurrying through the country 
as though he were riding a race, or running away from a 
bailiff, or travelling for a house in the cotton trade. 

I walk resolutely on my journey from Garstaiug : the mile- 
stones altering their tone now, and announcing so many miles 
and a half to Preston. The treacherous sun which has been 
playing a game of hide-and-seek with me all day, comes out 
again with a redoubled fury, and burns me to a white heat. 
Worse than this, I am between two long stages of beer, and 
a rustic, in a wide-awake hat, informs me that the next house 
of entertainment is at Cabus, " a bad fower mile fadder an." 
Worse than all, there is no cottage, farm-house, lodge-gate, 
to be seen where I can obtain a drink of water. I am 
parched, swollen, carbonised. A little girl passes me with 
an empty tin can in which she has carried her father's beer 
with his dinner to the hay-field. The vacuity of the vessel 
drives me to frenzy. My nature abhors such a vacuum. 
There are certainly pools where geese are gabbling, rivulets 
whither come the thirsty cows to drink, ditches where the 
lonely donkey washes down his meal of thistle. But I have 
no cup, waterproof cap, not even an egg-shell, in which I 
could scoop out water enough for a draught. I have broken 
my pipe, and cannot, even if I would, drink out of its bowl. 
I am ashamed of using my boot as a goblet. I might, it is 
true, lie down by the side of a ditch, and drink like a beast 



Twenty Miles. 289 

of the field ; but I have no fancy for eating, while I drink, of 
the toad, the tadpole, the water-newt, the swimming-frog, 
the old rat, the ditch dog, and the green mantle of the stand- 
ing pool. Poor Tom could do no more than that, who was 
whipped from tything to tything, and whose food for seven 
long years was " mice, and rats, and such small deer." 

I lean over a bridge, beneath which ripples a little river. 
The channel is partially dry, but a clear, sparkling little 
stream, hurries along over the pebbles most provokingly. I 
groan in bitterness of spirit as I see this tantalising river, and 
am about descending to its level, and making a desperate 
attempt to drink out of the hollow of my hands, at the risk 
of ruining my all-round collar, when, in my extremity on the 
river's bank, I descry Pot. Pot is of common red earthen- 
ware — broken, decayed, full of dried mud and sand — but I 
hail Pot as my friend, as my deliverer. I descend. I very 
nearly break my shins over a log of timber. I incur the peril 
of being indicted for poaching or trespassing in a fishing pre- 
serve. I seize Pot. Broken as lie is, there is enough con- 
vexity in him to hold half-a-pint of water. I carefully clean 
out his incrustation of dried mud. I wipe him, polish him 
tenderly, as though I loved him. And then, oh, all ye water 
gods, I Drink ! How often, how deeply, I know not ; but I 
drink till I remember that the water swells a man> and that 
I should be a pretty sight if I were swelled ; whereupon with 
a sigh I resign Pot, give him an extra polish, place him in a 
conspicuous spot for the benefit of some future thirsty way- 
farer, and leave him, invoking a blessing upon his broken 
head. This done, I resume my way rejoicing. I catch up 
the milestones that were getting on ahead, and just as the 

u 



290 Dutch Pi&ures. 

cool of the afternoon begins, I am at my journey's end. I 
have walked my twenty miles, and am ready for the juicy 
steak, the cool tankard, the long deep sleep, and the welcome 
railway back to Lancaster. 

I beg to state that from Lancaster, whence I started at 
nine a.m., to Preston, where I arrive about five p.m., in this 
long, hot walk of twenty miles, I see no castle, tower, 
gentleman's mansion, pretty cottage, bosky thicket, or cascade. 
The whole walk is eminently common-place. A high road, 
common hedges, common fields, common cows and sheep, 
common people and children — these are all I have seen. 
The whole affair is as insipid as cold boiled veal. How many 
insipid things there are ! A primrose by the river's brim 
was a yellow primrose to Peter Bell, and it was nothing more ; 
but take the primrose, the cold boiled veal, even my tiresome 
walk of twenty miles, in an artistic light, and something may 
be gained from each. 




*» 




J4- 



XIX. 

LITTLE SAINT ZITA — A CULINARY LEGEND. 



THERE is a collection of horrible, though admirably 
executed, etchings, by the "noble Jacques Callot," 
extant called " Images des Martyrs, Les Saincts et Sainctes de 
FAnnee." It is a complete pictorial calendar of the Eomish 
martyrology. No amount of indigestion, caused by sup- 
pers of underdone pork-chops; no nightmares, piled one on 
another; no distempered imaginings of topers in the worst 
state of delirium tremens ; no visions of men with guilt-laden 
consciences — could culminate into a tenth part of the horrors 
that the noble Jacques has perpetuated with his immortal 
graver. All the refinements of torture, invented by the ruth- 
less and cruel pagans, and inflicted by them on the early 
confessors, are here set down in minute detail ; not a dislo- 
cate dlimb is omitted, not a lacerated muscle is passed over. 
The whole work is a vast dissecting-room — a compendium of 
scarifications, mannings, and dismemberments— of red-hot 
pincers, scalding oil, molten lead, gridirons, wire scourges, 
jagged knives, crowns of spikes, hatchets, poisoned daggers, 
tarred shirts, and wild beasts. 

The blessed saints had a bad time of it for certain. How 

v 2 



292 Dutch Pictures. 

should we, I wonder, with our pluralities, our Easter-offerings, 
and regium donum, our scarlet hats and stockings, and dwel- 
lings in the gate of Mam ; our Exeter Hall meetings and 
buttered muffins afterwards; our first-class missionary pas- 
sages to the South Seas, and grants of land and fat hogs from 
King Wabashongo ; our dean and chapter dinners, and semi- 
military chaplains' uniforms (Oh, last-invented, but not least 
scorn-worthy of humbugs !) ; how should we confront the 
stake, the shambles, and the executioner, the scourge, the 
rack, and the amphitheatre? Surely the Paith must have 
been strong, or the legends untrue ! 

Yet there are more saints than the noble Jacques ever 
dreamed of in his grim category, crowded as it is. Saint 
Patrick, if we may credit the Irish legend, had two birthdays ; 
still, the number of saints, all duly canonised, is so great, 
that the year can scarcely spare them the sixth of a birthday 
apiece. Only yesterday, the postman (he is a Parisian post- 
man, and, in appearance, is something between a policeman 
and a field-marshal in disguise) brought me a deformed little 
card, on which was pasted an almanac with a whole calendar- 
full of saints, neatly tied up with cherry-coloured riband, 
accompanying the gift with the compliments of the season, 
and an ardent wish that the new year might prove bonne et 
belle to me; all of which meant that I should give him two 
francs, on pain of being denounced to the door-porter as a 
curmudgeon, to the landlord as a penniless lodger, and to 
the police as a suspicious character. Musing over the little 
almanac, in the futile attempt to get two francs' worth of 
information out of it, I found a whole army of saints, of 
whom I had never heard before, and noticed the absence of a 



Little Saint Zit a. 293 

great many who are duly set down in another calendar I 
possess. Would you believe that neither Saint Giles nor 
Saint Swithin was to be found in my postman's hagiology — 
that no mention was made of Saint Waldeburga, or of the 
blessed Saint Wuthelstan ; while on the other hand I found 
Saint Yon, Saint Fiacre, Saint Ovid, Saint Babylas/ Saint 
Pepin, Saint Ponce, Saint Erisque, Saint Nestor, and Saint 
Pantaloon ? What do we know of these saints in England ? 
Where were Saint Willibald, Saint Winifred, Saint Edward 
the Confessor, and Saint Dunstan, the nose-tweaker ? No- 
where ! Yet they must all have their days, their eves, and 
morrows. Where, above all, was my little Saint Zita ? 

If one of the best of Christian gentlemen — the kindly 
humourist, who wrote the Ingoldsby Legends — could tell us, 
without scandal to his cloth or creed, the wondrous stories of 
Saint Gengulphus and Saint Odille, Saint Anthony and Saint 
Nicholas, shall I be accused of irreverence, if, in my own 
way, I tell the legend of little Saint Zita ? I must premise 
that the first discovery of the saintly tradition is due to M. 
Alphonse Karr, who has a villa at Genoa, the birth-place of 
the Saint herself. 

I have no memory for dates, and no printed informa- 
tion to go upon, so I am unable to state the exact year, or 
even century, in which Saint Zita nourished. But I know 
that it was in the dark ages, and that the Christian religion 
was young, and that it was considerably more than one 
thousand five hundred years ago. 

Now, Pomponius Cotta (I give him that name because it 
is a sounding one— not that I know his real denomination) 
was a noble Roman. He was one of the actors in that drama 



294 Dutch Pictures, 

which Mr. Gibbon of London and Lausanne so elegantly des- 
cribed some centuries afterwards : "The Decline and Fall of the 
Eornan Empire." It must have been a strange time, that 
Decline and Fall. Eenecting upon the gigantic, overgrown, 
diseased civilisation of the wonderful empire, surrounded and 
preyed upon by savage and barbarous Goths and Visigoths, 
Vandals, Dacians, and Pannonians, I cannot help picturing to 
myself some superannuated old noble, accomplished, luxurious, 
diseased, and depraved — learned in ion-mots and scandalous 
histories of a former age, uselessly wealthy, corruptly culti- 
vated, obsoletely magnificent, full of memories of a splendid 
but infamous life, too old to reform, too callous to repent, cyni- 
cally presaging a deluge after him, yet trembling lest that 
deluge should come while he was yet upon the stage, and 
wash his death-bed with bitter waters ; who is the sport and 
mock, the unwilling companion and victim unable to help 
himself, of a throng of rough, brutal, unpolished youngsters 
— hobbedehoys of the new generation — who carouse at his 
expense, smoke tobacco under his nose, borrow his money, 
slap him on the back, and call him old fogey behind it, sneer 
at his worn out stories, tread on his gouty toes, ridicule his 
old-fashioned politeness, and tie crackers to the back of his 
coat collar. Have you not seen the decline and fall of the 
human empire ? 

But Pomponius Cotta never recked, it is very probable, of 
such things. He might have occasionally expressed his belief, 
like some noble Eomans of our own age and empire, that the 
country was going to the bad ; but he had large revenues, 
which he spent in a right noble and Eoman manner ; and he 
laid whatever ugly misgivings he had in a red sea of Falernian 



Little Saint Zita. 295 

and Chiajian (if, indeed, all the stock of those celebrated 
vintages had not already been drunk out by the thirsty Visi- 
goths and Vandals). He had the finest house in Genoa; 
and you who know what glorious palaces the city of the 
Dorias and the Spinolas can yet boast of, even in these 
degenerate days, may form an idea of what marvels of marble, 
statuary, frescos, and mosaics owned Pomponius Cotta for 
lord, in the days when there was yet a Parthenon at Athens, 
and a Capitol at Kome. 

The noble Pomponius was a Christian, but I am afraid 
only in a very slovenly, lukewarm, semi-pagan sort of way. As 
there are yet in Prance some shrivelled old good-for-nothings 
whose sympathies are with Voltaire and d'Alembert — who 
sigh for the days of the Encyclopedia, the Esprits-forts, and 
the Baron d'Holbach's witty, wicked suppers, so Pomponius 
furtively regretted the old bad era before creation heard 
the voice that cried out that the god Pan was dead* — the 
days when there were mysteries and oracles, sacrifices and 
Lares, and Penates, and when laziness and lust, dishonesty, 
and superstition, were reduced into systems, and dignified 
with the name of philosophy. So Pomponius half believed 
in the five thousand gods he had lost, and was but a skin- 
deep worshipper of the One left. As for his wife, the Domina 
Plavia Pomponia, she came of far too noble a Koman family, 
was far too great a lady, thought far too much of crimping 
her tresses, perfuming her dress, painting her face, giving 

* This is one of the earliest traditions of the Christian era : that at 
midnight on the first Christmas-Eve a great voice was heard all over the 
world, crying, " The God Pan is dead." Milton bursts into colossal 
melody on this key-note in his magnificent Christmas hymn. See also a 
learned lyric by the late Mrs. Browning. 



296 Dutch Pictures. 



grand entertainments, and worrying her slaves, to devote her- 
self to piety and the practice of religion ; and though One- 
simus, that blessed though somewhat unclean hermit, did 
often come to the Poraponian house and take its mistress 
roundly to task for her mundane mode of life, she only 
laughed at the good man ; quizzed his hair, shirt, and long 
thickly-peopled beard ; and endeavoured to seduce him from 
his recluse fare of roots and herbs and spring-water, by pres- 
sing invitations to partake of dainty meals and draughts of 
hot wine.* 

I am not so uncharitable as to assume that all the seven 
deadly sins found refuge in the mansion of Pomponious Cotta, 
but it is certain that it was a very fortalice and citadel for 
one of them — namely gluttony. There never were such noble 
Eomans (out of Guildhall) as the Pomponii for guzzling and 
guttling, banqueting, junketing, feasting, and carousing. It 
was well that plate glass was not invented in those times, for 
the house was turned out of windows regularly every day, 
and the major part of the Pomponian revenues would have 
been expended in glaziers' bills. But there were dinners, 
and suppers, and after-suppers. The guests ate till they 
couldn't move, and drank till they couldn't see. Of course 
they crowned themselves with flowers, and lolled upon soft 
couches, and had little boys to titillate their noses with rare 
penumes, and pledged each other to the sounds of dulcet 
music ; but they were an emerited set of gormandisers for all 
that, and richly deserved the visitation of the stern Nemesis 
that sate ever in the gate in the shape of the fair-haired bar- 
barian, with the brand to burn, the sword to slay, and the 
hands to pillage. Or, like the Philistine lords, they caroused 



Little Saint Zita. 297 

and made merry, unwotting of that stern, moody, blind 
Samson, sitting apart, yonder, with his hair all a-growing, 
and soon to arise in his might and pull the house down on 
their gluttonous heads. Or, like Belshazzer's feasters, they 
were drunk in vessels of gold and silver, while the fingers of 
a man's hand were writing on the wall, and the Medes and 
Persians were at the gate. 

It may easily be imagined that in such a belly-god 
temple — such a house of feasting and wassail — the cook was 
a personage of great power and importance. Pomponius 
Cotta had simply the best cook not only in Genoa, but in 
Magna Graecia — not only in Magna Graecia, but in the whole 
Italian peninsula. But no man-cook had he — no haughty, 
stately, magister coquina, no pedant in Apicius, or bigoted 
believer in Lucullus. Yet Pomponius was proud and happy 
in the possession of a culinary treasure — a real cordon-bleu, 
a Mrs. Glasse of the dark ages, a Miss Acton of antiquity, a 
Mrs. Eundell of Eomanity ; and this was no other than a 
little slave girl whom they called Zita. 

We have all heard of the cook who boasted that he could 
serve up a leathern shoe in twenty-seven different phases of 
sauce and cookery. I never believed in him, and always set 
him down as a vapouring fanfaroon — a sort of copper-stew- 
pan captain of cookery. But I have a firm belief that little 
Zita would have made everything out of anything or nothing 
culinary ; that her stewed pump-handles would have been 
delicious, her salmi of bath-brick exquisite, her croquettes of 
Witney blanket unapproachable, her horsehair en joapillotes a 
dish fit for a king. She cooked such irresistible dishes for 
the noble Pomponius that he frequently wept, and would 



298 Dutch Pictures. 

have given her her freedom had he not been afraid that she 
would be off and be married : that the noble Domina Pom- 
ponia was jealous of her, and that she would have led a sorry 
life, had the Domina dared to cross her husband ; that the 
guests of the Pomponiaxi house wrote bad sapphics and dac- 
tylics in her praise, and would have given her necklaces of 
pearl and armlets of gold for gifts, but that the Eoman 
finances were in rather an embarrassed condition just then, 
and that poor trust was dead with the Genoese jewellers. 

Little Zita was very pretty ; she must have been pretty — 
and she was. She was as symmetrical as one of Pradier's 
Bacchantes — as ripe and blooming as the grapes they press ; 
but as pure as the alabaster of which they are made. Her 
complexion was as delicately, softly tinted as one of Mr. 
Gibson's Graaco- Eoman statues; her long hair, when she 
released it from its confining fillet, hung down about her like 
a king's mantle ; she had wrists and ankles that only gold 
or gems were worthy to embrace : she had a mouth like a 
Cupid's bow, and eyes like almonds dyed in ebony; and 
teeth that were gates of ivory to the dreams of love, and nails 
like mother of pearl. She danced like Arbuscula, and sang 
like Galeria Coppiola; and she cooked, like an angel — as 
she Is. 

None could serve up in such style the great standard 
dishes of Eoman cookery. The wild boar of Troy, with 
honey, oil, Hour and garum ; the Campanian sow fed from 
golden troughs, stuffed with chesnuts and spices, and 
brought to table whole with her nine little sucking pigs 
disposed around her in sweet sauce ; the vol-au-vents of pea- 
cocks' tongues, and ortolans' eyes, and nightingales' brains. 



Little Saint Zita. 299 

Yet, though great in these, she excelled in fanciful, ravish- 
ing, gem-like dishes — in what the French call surprises-— 
in culinary epigrams, edible enigmas, savoury fables, poems 
that you could eat and drink. She had sauces, the secrets of 
which have gone to Paradise with her; she had feats of 
legerdemain in compounding dishes that no life-long appren- 
ticeship could teach. And, withal, she was so saving, so 
economical, so cleanly in her arrangements, that her kitchen 
was like a street in the clean village of Brock (I should not 
like to pass half an hour even in Vefour's kitchen) ; and her 
noble master had the satisfaction of knowing that he gave 
the mightiest " spreads " in Genoa at anything but an un- 
reasonable or ruinous expense. 

She was as honest as a child's smile, and quite regardless 
of kitchen stuff, perquisites, Christmas boxes from trades- 
men ; and the dangerous old crones who hang about the area 
and cried hare-skins, as your own cook, madam, I hope may 
be. And, above all, little Zita had no followers, had boxed 
the major-domo's ears for offering her a pair of iilligree ear- 
rings, and was exceeding pious. 

Now, a pious cook is not considered, in these sceptical 
days, as a very great desideratum. A pious cook not uufre- 
quently refuses to cook a Sunday's dinner, and entertains a 
non-serious grenadier on Sunday evening. I have seen many 
a kitchen drawer in which the presence of a hymn-book, and 
the " Cook's Spiritual Comforter " (price ninepence per hun- 
dred for distribution) did not exclude the company of much 
surreptitious cold fat and sundry legs of fowls that were not 
picked clean. Serious cooks occasionally wear their mis- 
tresses' black silk stockings to go to chapel in ; my aunt had a 



300 Dutch Pictures. 

serious cook who drank ; and there is a legend in our family 
of a peculiarly evangelical cook who could not keep her 
hands off other people's pomatum. But little Zita was sin- 
cerely, unfeignedly, cheerfully, devotedly pious. She did not 
neglect her duties to pray : she rose up early in the morning 
before the cock crew, while her masters were sunk in drunken 
sleep, and prayed for herself and for them, and then went to 
her daily labour with vigorous heart of grace. There are 
some of us who pray, as grudgingly performing a certain 
duty, and doing it, but no more — some of us as an example 
(and what an example !) to others — some through mere habit 
(and those are in a bad case) — some (who shall gainsay it!) 
in hypocrisy ; but do we not all, Scribes and Pharisees, Pub- 
licans and Sinners, number among our friends, among those 
we know, some few good really pious souls who strike us 
with a sort of awe and reverent respect ; who do their good 
deeds before we rise, or after we retire to rest ; creep into 
heaven the back way, but are not the less received there with 
trumpets and crowns of glory ? 

Such was little Saint Zita. She was, I have said, truly, 
pious. In an age when there was as yet but one Eitua], be- 
fore dissent and " drums ecclesiastic " existed, Zita thought 
it her bounden duty to abide by and keep all the fasts and 
festivals of the church as ordained by the bishops, priests, 
and deacons. For she was not book-learned, this poor little 
cook-maid, and had but these three watchwords for her rule 
of conduct — Paith, Duty, and Obedience. 

It is in the legend that she would decoy the little white- 
haired, blue-eyed children of the barbarian soldiers into her 
kitchen, and there, while giving them sweetmeats and other 






Little Saint Zita. 301 

goodies, teach them to lisp little Latin prayers, and tell over 
the rosary, and kiss the crucifix appended to it. She be- 
stowed the major part of her wages in gifts to beggars, 
unmindful whether they were christian or pagan ; and, for a 
certainty, the strong-minded would have sneered at her, and 
the wearers of phylacteries would have frowned on her, for 
she thought it a grave sin to disobey the edict of the church 
that forbade the eating of flesh on Friday and other ap- 
pointed fasts. Pomponius Cotta, it must be acknowledged, 
was troubled with no such scruples. He would have rated 
his cook soundly, and perchance scourged her, if she had 
served him up meagre fare on the sixth day of the week ; yet 
I find it in the legend that little Zita was enabled by her own 
skill, and, doubtless, by celestial assistance, to perpetrate a 
pious fraud upon this epicurean Roman. The Fridays' din- 
ners were as rich and succulent, and called forth as loud an 
encomium as those of the other days, yet not one scrap of 
meat, one drop of carnal gravy, did Zita employ in the con- 
coction thereof. Fish, and eggs, and divers mushrooms, 
truffles and catsups, became, in the hands of the saintly 
cook, susceptible of giving the most meaty flavours. 'Tis 
said that Zita invented burnt onions — those grand culinary 
deceptions ! And though they were in reality making meagre, 
as good Christians should do, Pomponius and his boon com- 
panions thought they were feasting upon venison and poultry 
and choice roasts. This is one of the secrets that died with 
Saint Zita. I never tasted sorrel pottage that had even the 
suspicion of a flavour of meat about it ; and though I have 
heard much of the rice fritters and savoury soups of the 
Lancashire vegetarians, I doubt much of their ability to 



302 Dutch Pictures. 

conceal the taste of the domestic cabbage and the homely 
onion. 

Now it fell out in the year — which, by the by, has un- 
luckily escaped me — that P. Maremnius Citronius Ostendius, 
a great gastronome and connoisseur in oysters, came from 
Asia to visit his kinsman Pomponius. There was- some talk 
of his marrying the beautiful Elavia Pomponilia, the eldest 
daughter of the Pomponian house (she was as jealous of Zita 
as Pleur cle Lys was of Esmeralda, and would have thrust 
golden pins into her, a-la-mode Romaine, but for fear of her 
father) ; but at all events Ostendius was come down from 
Asia to Genoa, and there was to be a great feast in honour 
of his arrival. Ostendius had an aldermanic abdomen under 
his toga, had a voice that reminded you of fruity port, bees- 
wings in his eyes, a face very like collared brawn, and wore 
a wig. Those adjuncts to beauty were worn, ladies and 
gentlemen, fifteen hundred years ago. Ay! look in at the 
Egyptian Eoom of the British Museum, London, and you 
shall find wigs older than that. He had come from Asia, 
where he was reported to have partaken of strange dishes 
— birds of paradise, gryphons, phoenixes, serpents, ele- 
phants — but he despised not the Persicos' apparatus, and 
was not a man to be trifled with in his victuals ! Pom- 
ponius'Cotta called his cook into his sanctum, and gave her 
instructions as to the banquet, significantly telling her what 
she might expect if she failed in satisfying him and his gas- 
tronomical guests. Poor Zita felt a cold shudder as she 
listened to the threats which, in lazy Latin, her noble master 
lavished upon her. But she determined, less through fear of 
punishment than a sincere desire of doing her duty, to exert 



hit tie Saint Zita. 303 

herself to the very utmost in the preparation of the feast. 
Perhaps there may have been a little spice of vanity in this 
determination ; perhaps she was actuated by a little harmless 
desire to please the difficult Ostendius, and so prove to him 
that Pomponius Cotta had a slave who was the best cook in 
Genoa and in Italy. Why not ? I am one who, believing 
that all is vanity, think that the world as it is could not 
well get on without some vanity. By which I mean an 
honest moderate love of and pleasure in approbation. I think 
we could much easier dispense with money than with this. 
When I see a conceited man, I think him to be a fool; but 
when I meet a man who tells me he does not rejoice when 
he is praised for the good book he has written, or the good 
picture he has painted, or the good deed he has done, I know 
him to be a humbug, and a mighty dangerous one to his 
fellow-creatures. 

Flowers, waxen torches, perfumes, rich tapestries, cunning 
musicians — all were ordered for the feast to the guest who 
was come from Asia. The piscator brought fish in abun- 
dance ; the lignariuB brought wood and charcoal to light the 
cooking furnaces withal ; the venator brought game and 
venison ; the sartor stitched unceasingly at vestments of 
purple and fine linen ; the slaves who fed ordinarily upon 
salsamentum or salt meat revelled in blithe thoughts of the 
rich fragments that would fall to their share on the morrow 
of the banquet. It need scarcely be said that Zita the cook 
had a whole army of cook's mates, scullions, marmitons, 
plate-scrapers, and bottle-washers, under her command. 
These peeled the vegetables, these jointed the meat, these 
strained the soups and jellies ; but to none did she ever con- 



304 Dutch Pictures. 

fide the real cooking of the dinner. Her spoon was in every 
casserole, her spatula in every sauceboat ; she knew the exact 
number of mushrooms to every gratin, and of truffles to 
every turkey. Believe me — in the works of great artists 
there is little vicarious handiwork. Asses say that Mr. Stan- 
field painted the scenery of Acis and Galatea by means of a 
speaking-trumpet from the shilling gallery, his assistants 
working on the stage. Asses say that Careme used to com- 
pose his dinners reclining on a crimson velvet couch, while 
his nephew mixed the magic ingredients in silver stewpans. 
Asses say that all the hammering and chiselling of Praxiteles' 
statues were done by workmen, and that the sculptor only 
polished np the noses and finger tips with a little marble 
dust. Don't believe such tales. In all great works the 
master-hand is everywhere. 

On the morning of the banquet, early, Zita went to mar- 
ket, and sent home stores of provisions, which her assistants 
knew well how to advance through their preparatory stages. 
Then, knowing that she had plenty of time before her, the 
pious little cook — though she had already attended matins — 
went to church to have a good pray. In the simplicity of 
her heart, she thought she would render up special thanks 
for all the good dinners she had cooked, and pray as specially 
that this evening's repast should be the very best and most 
succulent she might ever prepare. You see she was but a 
poor, ignorant, little slave-girl, and lived in the dark ages. 

Zita went to church, heard high mass, confessed, and 
then, going into a little dark chapel by herself, fell down 
on her knees before the shrine of Her whom she believed 
to be the Queen of Heaven. She prayed, and prayed, and 



Little Saint Zita. 305 

prayed so long, so earnestly, so devoutly, that she quite 
forgot how swiftly the hours fleet by, how impossible it is to 
overtake them. She prayed and prayed till she lost all con- 
sciousness and memory of earthly things, of earthly ties and 
duties : — till the vaulted roof seemed to open ; till she seemed 
to see, through a golden network, a sky of lapis-lazuli all 
peopled with angelic beings in robes of dazzling white ; till 
she heard soft sounds of music such as could only proceed 
from harps played by celestial hands ; till the statue of the 
Queen of Heaven seemed to smile upon her and bless her ; 
till she was no longer a cook and a slave, but an ecstatic in 
communion with the saints. 

She prayed till the mortal sky without, from the glare of 
noonday took soberer hues ; till the western horizon began 
to blush for Zita's tardiness ; till the great blue Mediterra- 
nean sea grew purple, save where the sunset smote it ; till 
the white palaces of Genoa were tinged with pink, as if the 
sky had rained roses. She prayed till the lazy dogs which 
had been basking in the sun rose and shook themselves and 
raised their shiftless eyes as if to wonder where the sun was ; 
till the barbarian soldiers, who had been lounging on guard- 
house benches, staggered inside, and fell to dicing and 
drinking ; till hired assassins woke up on their straw pallets, 
and, rubbing their villanous eyes, began to think that it was 
pretty nearly time to go a murdering ; till cut-purses' fingers 
began to itch premonitorily ; till maidens watched the early 
moon, and longed for it to be sole sovereign of the heavens, 
that the trysting-time might arrive ; till the young spendthrift 
rejoiced that another day was to come, and the old sage sighed 
that another day was gone ; till sick men quarrelled with 

x 



306 Dutch Pictures. 

their nurses for closing their casements, and the birds grew 
drowsy, and the flowers shut themselves up in secresy, and 
the frog began to speak to his neighbour, and the glow-worm 
kindled his lamp. 

She prayed till it was dusk, and almost dark, till the 
vesper bell began to ring, when she awoke from out her 
trance ; and not a dish of the dinner was cooked ! 

And she hurried home, weeping, ah ! so bitterly. For 
Zita knew her duty towards her neighbour as the road to- 
wards Heaven. She knew that there were times for all 
things, and that she had prayed too much and too long. 
Punishment she did not so much dread as the reproaches of 
her own conscience for the neglect of her duty. At length, 
faltering and stumbling in the momentarily increasing dark- 
ness, she reached the Pomponian house, which was all 
lighted up from top to bottom. "Ah ! " thought she, "the 
major domo has, at least, attended to his business." She 
hurried into a small side court-yard where the kitchen was, 
and there she found all her army of assistants : the cook's 
mates, the scullions, the marmitons, the plate-scrapers, and 
the bottle-washers, all fast asleep, with their ladles, their 
knives, and their spits on benches and doorsteps, and in 
corners. " Ah ! " cried little Zita, wringing her hands ; 
<c waiting for me, and quite worn out with fatigue ! " Then, 
stepping among them without awakening them, she approached 
the great folding-doors of the kitchen, and tried the handle ; 
but the doors were locked, and through the keyholes and 
hinges, the chinks and crannies of the portal, there came a 
rich, powerful, subtle odour, as of the best dinner that ever 
was cooked. She thought she understood it all. Enraged 



Little Saint Zita. 307 

at her absence, her master had sent for Maravilla, the corpu- 
lent female cook of Septimus Pylorus, his neighbour, to 
prepare the dinner, or, perhaps, the great P. Maremnius 
Citronius Ostendius had himself condescended to assume the 
cook's cap and apron, and was at that moment engaged 
within, with locked doors, in blasting her professional repu- 
tation for ever. She was ruined as a cook, a servant — a 
poor little fatherless girl, with nought but her virtue and 
her cookery for a dower. Unhappy little Zita I 

She ran back, through the court-yard to the great ban- 
quetting saloon, and there, lo ! she found the table decked, 
and the soft couches ranged, the flowers festooned, the rich 
tapestries hanging, and the perfumes burning in golden cen- 
sers. And there, too, she found the proud Domina Pom- 
ponia, in gala raiment, who greeted her with a smile of 
unwonted benevolence, saying : 

" Now, Zita, the guests are quite ready for the banquet ; 
and I am sure, from the odour which we can smell even 
here, that it will be the very best dinner that ever was 
cooked." 

Then came from an inner chamber the fruity Palernian 
voice of Ostendius, crying, 

" Ay, ay, I am sure it will be the very best dinner that 
ever was cooked •" and the voice of Pomponius Cotta 
answered him gaily, that " Little Zita was not the best 
cook in Genoa for nothing," and that he would not part with 
her for I don't know how many thousand sesterces. Poor 
Zita saw in this only a cruel jest. Por certain another cook 
had been engaged in her place, and she herself would be had 
up after the banquet, taunted with its success, confronted 

x 2 



308 Dutch Pictures. 

with her rival, and perhaps scourged to death amid the 
clatter of drinking-cups. Her eyes blinded with tears, she 
descended again to the court-yard, and fervently, though 
despairingly, breathed one more brief prayer to our Lady of 
the Chapel. She had scarcely concluded, when the great 
folding-doors of the kitchen flew open, and there issued forth 
a tremendous cloud of ambrosial vapour, radiant, golden, 
roseate, azure, in which celestial odours were mingled with 
the unmistakeable smell of the very best dinner that ever 
was cooked. And lo ! hovering in the cloud, the rapt eye 
of little Saint Zita seemed to descry myriads of little airy 
figures in white caps and jackets, even like unto cooks 1 , but 
who all had wings and little golden knives at their girdles. 
And she heard the same soft music that had stolen upon her 
ears in the chapel ; and as the angelic cooks fluttered out of 
the kitchen, it seemed as though each little celestial Soyer 
saluted the blushing cheek of the trembling maiden with a 
soft and soothing kiss. 

At the same time the army of earthly cook's assistants 
awoke as one scullion, and without so much as yawning, took 
their places at the dresser-board, and composedly began to 
dish the dinner. And little Zita hurrying from furnace to 
furnace, and lifting up the lids of casseroles and bain-marie 
pans, found, done to a turn, a dinner even such as she with 
all her culinary genius would never have dreamt of. 

Of course it was a Miracle. Of course it was the very- 
best dinner ever dressed : what else could it have been with 
such cooks ? They talk of it to this day in Genoa ; though 
I am sorry to say the Genoese cooks have not profited by the 
example, and do not seek to emulate it. They have the 



Little Saint Zita, 309 

best maccaroni, and dress it in worse fashion than any other 
people in Europe. 

The legend ought properly to end with a relation of how 
Pomponius Cotta gave his little cook her freedom, how the 
guests loaded her with presents, and how she married the 
major domo, and was the happy mother of many good cooks 
and notable housewives. But the grim old monkish tradi- 
tion has it, that little Zita died a Virgin, and, alas, a Martyr ! 
But she was canonised after her death; and even as St. 
Crispin looks after the interests of Coblers, and St. Barbe 
has taken Bombadiers under his special patronage, so the 
patroness of Cooks has ever since been little Saint Zita, 




XX. 



FIRST FRUITS. 



f\F primary causes or primary colours, I am neither philo- 
^-' sopher nor optician enough to be enabled profitably to 
discourse. Yet there are primaries — first things — in all our 
lives very curious and wonderful, replete with matter for 
speculation, interesting because they come home to and can 
be understood by us all. 

That it is " le premier pas qui coitte" — that the first step 
is the great point — is as much a household word to us, and is 
as familiar to our mouths as that the descent of Avernus is 
unaccompanied by difficulty, or that one member of the 
feathered creation held in the hand is worth two of the same 
species in the bush. And, if I might be permitted to add to 
the first quoted morsel of proverbial philosophy a humble 
little rider of my own, I would say that we never forget the 
first step, the first ascent, the first stumble, the first fall. 
Time skins, over the wound of later years, and, looking at the 
cicatrice (if, indeed, a scar should remain), we even wonder 
who inflicted the wound, where or how, or when it was 
inflicted, and when and where healed. But the first-born 
of our wounds are yet green, and we can see the glittering 



Firji Fruits. 311 

glaive, and feel the touch of the steel, now that our hair is 
grizzled, and our friends and enemies are dead, and we have 
other allies and foes who were babies in the old time when 
we got that hurt. 

Many men have as many minds, but we are all alike in 
this respect. The camera may be costly rosewood or plain 
deal, the lens of rare pebble or simple bottle glass, but the 
first impressions come equally through the focus, and are 
photographed with equal force on the silver tablet or 
collodionized papyrus of memory. The duke and the dust- 
man, the countess and the costermonger, the schoolboy and 
the whiteheaded patriarch — for all the dreary seas that flow 
between the to-day they live in, and the yesterday wherein 
they began life — still, like the cliffs in Cristabel, bear the 
"mark of that which once hath been." 

Many primaries are locked up in the secret cabinets of the 
mind, of which we have mislaid (and think we have lost) the 
keys ; but we have not; and, from time to time, finding them 
in bunches in old coat pockets, or on disregarded split rings, 
we open them. From the old desk of the mind we take the 
first love letter, of which the ink is so yellow now, and was 
so brilliant once, but whose characters are as distinct as ever. 
From the old wardrobe of the mind we draw the first tail- 
coat — threadbare, musty, and worm-eaten, now ; but the first 
tail-coat for all that. For all that we may have been twice 
bankrupt and once insolvent • for all that Jack may have been 
transported, or Ned consigned to his coffin years ago, or 
Tom barbecued in Typee or Omoo regions ; for all that we 
may be riding in golden coaches, and denying that we ever 
trotted in the mud ; for all that we may have changed our 



312 Dutch Pictures. 

names, or tacked titles to them, or given the hand that was 
once horny and labour-stained a neat coat of blood-red 
crimson, and nailed it on a shield, like a bat on a barn door ; 
for all that we eat turtle instead of tripe, and drink Moselle 
instead of "max;" the primaries shall never be forgotten, the 
moment when our foot pressed the first step shall never vanish. 
Cast the stone as far into the river of Lethe as you will, the 
sluggish tide shall wash it back again, and, after playing duly 
with it on the sand, ever land it high and dry upon the 
beach. 

Male primaries and female primaries there are, and I 
am of the ruder sex ; but there are many common to both 
sexes. 

Not this one though, the first — well there is no harm in 
it ! — the first pai» of trousers. Who does not remember, who 
can ever forget, those much desiderated, much prized, much 
feared, much admired, articles of dress? How stiff, angular, 
hard, wooden, they seemed to our youthful limbs ! How 
readily, but for the proper pride and manliness we felt in 
them — the utter majority and independence of seven years of 
age — we would have east them off fifty times the very first 
day we wore them, and, resuming the kilt, have once more 
roamed our little world a young- Highlander ? How (all is 
vanity!) we mounted on surreptitious chairs, viewed our- 
selves in mirrors, and, being discovered in the act by pretty 
cousins, blushed dreadfully, and were brought thereby to 
great grief and shame ! What inexpressible delight in that 
first plunge of the hand (and half the arm) into the trousers 
pocket, in the first fingering of the silver sixpence deposited 
five fathoms deep, for luck ! What bitter pain and humiliation 



Firji Fruits. 3*3 

we felt when, first strutting forth abroad in them, rude 
contumelious, boys mocked us, likened us to a pair of tongs, 
aimed at our legs with peg-tops ! What agonies we suffered 
from that wicked youth (he must have been hanged or 
transported in after years) who, with a nail — a rusty nail — 
tore the left leg of those trousers into a hideous rent, and then 
ran away laughing ! what tortures at the thought of what 
our parents and guardians would say ! Those premier 
pantaloons were snuff-coloured, buttoning over the trousers, 
and forming, with an extensive shirt frill, what was then 
called a " skeleton suit." They shone very much, and had a 
queer smell of the snuff-coloured dye. They gave the wearer 
something of a trussed appearance, like a young fowl ready 
for the spit. It was a dreadful fashion, as offering irresistible 
temptations to the schoolmaster to use his cane. You were 
got up ready for him, and abstinence was more than he could 
bear. "VVe confess to a horrid relish in this wise ourselves at 
the present time. When we see (rare spectacle now-a-days) 
a small boy in a skeleton suit, and his hands in his pockets, 
our fingers itch to be at him ! 

The first picture book ! We date from the time of the 
Prince Eegent, and remember picture books about dandies — 
satires upon that eminent personage himself, possibly — but 
we never knew it. In those days there was a certain bright, 
smooth, cover for picture books, like a glorified surgical 
plaister, It has gone out this long, long, time. The picture 
book that seems to have been our first, was about one Mr. 
Pillblister (in the medical profession, we presume, from the 
name), who gave a party. As the legend is impressed x>n oux 
remembrance it opened thus .: 



314 Dutch Pictures. 

" Mr. Pillblister, and Betsy, his sister, 
Determined on giving a treat ; 
Gay dandies they call, 
To a supper" and ball, 
At their house in Great Camomile Street." 

The pictures represented male dandies in every stage of 
preparation for this festival, holding on to bedposts to have 
their stays laced, embellishing themselves with artificial 
personal graces of many kinds, and enduring various 
humiliations in remote garrets. One gentleman found a hole 
in his stocking at the last moment. 

" A hole in my stocking, 
O how very shocking ! 
Says poor Mr. (Some one) enraged, 
It's always my fate, 
To be so very late, 
When at Mr. Pillblister's engaged I" 

If we recollect right, they all got there at last, and passed 
a delightful evening. When we first came to London (not 
the least of our primaries), we rejected the Tower, West- 
minster Abbey, St. Paul's, and the Monument, and entreated 
to be taken to Great Camomile Street. 

About the same period we tasted our first oyster. A 
remarkable sensation ! We feel it slipping down our throats 
now, like a kind of maritime castor oil, and are again bewildered 
by an unsatisfactory doubt whether it was the oyster that 
made that mysterious disappearance, or whether we are going 
to begin to taste it presently. 

The first play ! The promise, the hope deferred, the saving 
clause of " no fine weather no play," the more than Murphian 
scrutiny of the weather during the day ! Willingly did we 



Firji Fruits. 3*5 

submit, at five o'clock that evening, to the otherwise, and at 

any other time, detestable ordeal of washing and combing, 

and being made straight. We did not complain when the soap 

got into our eyes ; we bore the scraping of the comb and the 

rasping of the brush without a murmur : we were going to 

the play, and we were happy. Dressed, of course, an hour too 

soon ; drinking tea as a mere ceremony — for the tea might 

have been hay and hot water (not impossible), and the bread 

and butter might have been sawdust, for anything we could 

taste of it ; sitting, with petful impatience, in the parlour, 

trying on the first pair of white kid gloves, making sure that 

the theatre would be burnt down, or that papa would never 

come home from the office, or mamma would be prevented, by 

some special interference of malignant demons, from having her 

dress fastened, or that (to a positive certainty) a tremendous 

storm of hail, rain, sleet, and thunder, would burst out, as 

we stepped into the fly, and send us, theatreless, to bed. 

We went to the play, and were happy. The sweet, dingy, 

shabby, little country theatre, we declared, and believed to be, 

much larger than either Drury Lane or Covent Garden, of 

which little Master Cheesewright — whose father was a tailor, 

and always had orders — was wont to brag. Dear narrow, 

uncomfortable, faded cushioned, flea haunted; single tier of 

boxes ! The green curtain, with a hole in it, through which a 

bright eye peeped ; the magnificent officers, in red and gold 

coats (it was a garrison town), in the stage box, who 

volunteered, during the acts, the popular catch of— 

*' Ah, how, Sophia, can you leave 
Your lover, and of hope bereave ?" 

— for our special amusement and delectation, as we thought 



316 Dutch PiBures. 

then, but, as we are inclined to fear now, under the influence 
of wine. The pit, with so few people in it ; with the lady, who 
sold apples and oranges, sitting in a remote corner, like 
Pomona in the sulks. And the play when it did begin — 
stupid, badly acted, badly got up as it very likely was. Our 
intense, fear-stricken admiration of the heroine, when she let 
her back hair down, and went mad, in blue. The buff boots 
of Runt, the manager. The funny man (there never was such 
a funny man) in a red scratch wig, who, when imprisoned in 
the deepest dungeon beneath the castle moat, sang a comic 
song about a leg of mutton. The sorry quadrille band in the 
orchestra, to our ears as scientifically melodious as though 
Costa had been conductor ; Sivori, first fiddle ; Richardson, 
flute ; or Bottesini, double bass. The refreshment, adminis- 
tered to us by kind hands during the intervals of performance, 
never to be forgotten — oranges, immemorial sponge-cakes. 
The admonitions to " sit up," the warnings not to " talk 
loud," in defiance of which (seeing condonatory smiles on the 
faces of those we loved) we screamed outright with laughter, 
when the funny man, in the after-piece, essaying to scale a 
first floor front by means of a rope ladder, fell, ladder and all, 
to the ground. The final fall of the green curtain, followed 
by an aromatic perfume of orange-peel and lamp-oil, and the 
mysterious appearance of ghostly brown Holland draperies 
from the private boxes. Shawling, cloaking, home, and more 
primaries — for then it was when we for the first time " sat 
up late," and for the first time ever tasted sandwiches after 
midnight, or imbibed a sip, a very small sip, of hot something 
gnd water. 

Who can lay his hand upon his waistcoat pocket, and say 



Firji Fruits, 317 

he has forgotten his first watch ? Ours was a dumpy silver 
one, maker's name Snoole, of Chichester, number seventeen 
thousand three hundred and ten. Happy Snoole, to have 
made so many watches ; yet we were happy — oh, how happy ! 
to possess even one of them. We looked at that watch con- 
tinually ; we set it at every clock, and consulted it every five 
minutes ; we opened and shut it, we wound it up, we regu- 
lated it, we made it do the most amazing things, and sud- 
denly run a little chain off a wheel in a tearing manner — 
after which it stopped. How obliging we were to everybody 
who wished to know what o'clock it was ! Did we ever go to 
bed without that watch snug under the pillow ? Did not a 
lock of our sweetheart's hair have a sweet lurking place 
between the inner and outer cases ? Where is that dumpy 
silver watch — where the more ambitious pinchbeck (there are 
no pinchbeck watches now) that followed? Where is the 
gold Geneva, the highly finished hunter, with compensation 
balance and jewelled in a thousand and one holes, from 
Benson of Ludgate Hill, the silver lever ? How many 
watches have we bought, sold, swopped, and bartered, since 
then ; and which of them do we remember half so well as 
the dumpy silver, maker's name Snoole, Chichester, seven- 
teen thousand three hundred and ten ! 

And the first lock of a sweetheart's hair brings me to the 
primary of primaries — First love. We don't believe, we can't 
believe, the man who tells us he has never been in love, and 
can't remember with delicious, and yet melancholy distinct- 
ness, all about it. We don't care whether it was the little 
girl with plaited tails, in frilled trousers, and a pinafore 
(though we never truly loved another) ; or your schoolmaster's 



318 Dutch Pictures. 

daughter, or the lady who attended to the linen department, 
whom we thought a Houri, but who was, probably, some 
forty years of age. You may have loved Fanny, Maria, 
Louisa, Sarah, Martha, Harriet, or Charlotte, or fancied that 
you loved them, since then ; but in your heart of hearts you 
still keep the portrait of your first love, bright. 

By first love, we mean what is commonly known as " calf 
love." Our reminiscences of real first love are indissolubly 
connected with a disrelish for our victuals, and a wild desire 
to dress, regardless of expense ; of dismal wailings in secret ; 
of a demoniacal hatred of all fathers, cousins, and brothers ; 
of hot summer days passed in green fields, staring at the birds 
on the boughs, and wishing — oh, how devoutly wishing ! — 
that we were twenty-one years of age. 

The first baby ! The doctor, the imperious nurse, the 
nervous walking up and down the parlour, the creaking stairs, 
the nurse again, imperious still, but now triumphant. The 
little stranger sparring like an infant Tom Cribb in long 
clothes. That baby's acts and deeds for months ! His 
extraordinary shrewdness, his unexampled beauty, his super- 
human capacity for "taking notice," his admirable Crich- 
tonian qualities. He was a baby ! Another and another 
little stranger have dropped in since then. Each was a baby, 
but not the baby ! 

We hope and trust you may never have had this primary 
we are about to speak of. But there are some persons of the 
male sex who may remember with sufficient minuteness the 
first time they ever got — elevated, liyou do, the impression 
will never be eradicated from your mind. Competent persons 
have declared you, on several subsequent occasions, to have 



Firjl Fruits. 319 

been incapable of seeing a hole in a ladder. The earth seemed 
to spin round in an inconsistent manner ; the pavement was 
soft — very soft — and felt, you said, as though you were walking 
on clouds ; until suddenly, without the slightest provocation, 
it came up and smote you on the forehead. Of course, you 
didn't fall down — that would have been ridiculous. Slan- 
derers declared that you attempted to climb up the gutter, 
under the impression that it Was a lamp-post ; and, being 
dissuaded therefrom, vehemently endeavoured to play the harp 
upon the area railings. How distinctly you remember to this 
day how completely you forgot everything ; how you dreamt 
you were a water-jug with no water in it — Tantalus, Prome- 
theus, Ixion, all rolled into one ; how you awoke the next 
morning without the slightest idea of how you got into bed ; 
how sick, sorry, and repentant you were ! 

Being in genteel society, we would not, of course, hint 
that any one of our readers can remember so very low and 
humiliating a thing as the first visit to " My Uncle " — the 
first pawnbroker. We have been assured though, by those 
whose necessities have sometimes compelled them to resort, 
for assistance, to their avuncular relation, that the first visit 
— the primary pawning — can never be forgotten. The 
timorous, irresolute glance at the three golden balls; the 
transparent hypocrisy of looking at the silver forks, watches 
jewelled in an indefinite number of holes, china vases, and 
Doyley and Mant's Family Bible (" to be sold, a bargain "), 
in the window ; the furtive, skulking slide round the corner, 
to the door in the court where the golden balls are embla- 
zoned again, with announcements of " Office, 3 ' and " Money 
Lent ;" the mental perplexity as to which of the little cell 



320 Dutch Pictures. 

doors looks the most benevolent ; and the timorous horror of 
finding the selected one occupied by an embarrassed shoe- 
maker raising money by debentures, on soleless Wellingtons 
and Bluchers. All these, we have been told, are memorable 
things. 

Another primary — the first death. The tan spread on 
the street before the door ; its odour in the house ; the first 
burst of grief when all was over ; the strange instinctive way 
in which those who seemed to know nothing of Death went 
about its giim requirements. The one appalling never-to-be- 
forgotten undertaker's knock at nine in the evening. The 
steps on the stairs ; the horrible agility and ghostly quietness. 
Then, the gentle melancholy that succeeded to the first bitter- 
ness of sorrow. 




XXI, 

OLD CLOTHES. 

ASTERN legislature has laid its red, or rather blue, right 
hand, in the shape of police enactments, upon many of 
the Cries of London. No more may the portly dustman toll 
his bell, and with lusty lungs make quiet streets re-echo to 
the cry of " Dust-ho ! " The young sweep's shrill announce- 
ment of his avocation is against the law; and the sweep 
himself — first mute, perforce — has now ceded his place to the 
Ramoneur voluntarily, and has vanished altogether. Of the 
Cries which the New Police Act has not included in its ban, 
many have come to disuse, and must be numbered now with 
old fashions and old-fashioned people. The Cries are dead, 
and the criers, too. The " small-coal-man," and the vender 
of saloop ; the merchant who so loudly declared in his boy- 
hood, that if he had as much money as he could tell, he 
would not cry young lambs to sell ; the dealer in sweet-stuff, 
who sung in so fine a baritone voice, and with so unctuous 
an emphasis, the one unvarying refrain, " My brandy-balls ! 
my brandy-balls ! My slap-up, slap-up brandy-balls ! " the 
seller of rotten-stone and emery, who, by way of rider to the 
announcement of his wares, added strong adjurations ; the 

Y 



322 Dutch Pictures, 

reduced gentlewoman, who cried, " cats' meat ! " ln so sub- 
dued a tone (she nourished before my time, and I only regard 
her in a traditional light) ; — all these are gone. There was a 
work published towards the close of the last century, full of 
copperplate pictures of the various London street-sellers, with 
notices of their " Cries." Look through the book now, and you 
will find few that are not obsolete. We have grown luxurious, 
and cry, " Pine apples, a penny a slice ! " — moral, and have 
superseded the tossing pieman, who cried, " Toss or buy ! up 
and win 'em ! " by a gaudy hot-pie " Depot," with plate-glas& 
window and mahogany fixtures. We have grown fastidious, 
and have deserted " 'Taters, all hot ! " for the Irish fruit 
warehouse." The voice of him who cried, " One a penny, 
two a penny, hot cross-buns ! " is hushed, goodness help us ! 
where are we going to ? The cry of " kearots" and " sparrow- 
grass" will go next, I suppose ; " cats'-meat" will no longer 
be allowed to be cried ; " milk ho ! " is doomed ; the cries of 
" butcher ! " and " baker ! " will be rendered illegal, and 
contrary to the statute. 

But as I write, floats on the ambient air, adown the quiet 
street in which I live, softly through the open window, 
gently to my pleased ears, a very familiar and welcome cry. 
I have always heard that cry, and always shall, I hope. It 
was cried in London streets years before I was born, and. 
will be cried years after I am dead. It never varies, never 
diminishes in volume or sonorous melody, this cry; for, 
as the world wags, and they that dwell in it live and die, 
they must be clothed — and, amidst the wear and tear of life, 
their clothes become worn and torn, too; — so we shall always 
have Old Clothes to buy or sell; and for many a year, down. 



Old Clothes. 323 

many a quiet street, through many an open window, shall 
float that old familiar cry— "Old Clo' ! " 

My first recollections of Old Clo' are entwined with the 
remembrance of a threat, very awful and terrifying to me 
then, of being imprisoned in the bag of an old clothesman, 
and forthwith conveyed away. My threatener was a nurse- 
maid, who, if I remember right, left our service in conse- 
quence of the mysterious disappearance of a new silk dress, 
which she solemnly averred my mother to " have worn clean 
out ; " and the clothesman was a dreadful old man, with a long, 
tangled, grey-reddish beard, a hawk nose, which, like the rebuke 
of the nautical damsel in Wapping Old Stairs, was never with- 
out a tear. This dreadful personage carried a bag of alarming 
size. I am not ashamed to say, now, that I perfectly believed 
this clothesman (a harmless Israelite, no doubt), to be capable 
of effecting my capture and abduction on the commission of 
any juvenile indiscretion whatsoever ; and that he, and " the 
sweep,'" a mysterious phantom I was often menaced with, but 
never saw ; a black dog, addicted to sitting on the shoulders 
of naughty children ; and a " big black man," supposed to be 
resident in the back kitchen, whence he made periodical 
irruptions for the purpose of devouring insubordinate juve- 
niles, formed in their glomerate natures the incarnation, to 
my youthful mind, of a certain personage who shall be name- 
less, but who has been likened to a roaring lion. 

Strangely enough, this old clothesman of mine (he was 
dreadfully old when I first knew him) doesn't seem to get any 
older, and cries " Clo' ! " to this day with undiminished voice 
and bag. I am not afraid of him now r , and have even held 
conversations with him touching the statistics and profits of 

Y 2 



324 Dutch Pictures. 

his trade. But I dream about him frequently, and never 
look at that very large bag of his without a certain sort of 
awed and hushed curiosity. Very curious are early impres- 
sions in their ineffaceability. We can remember the father 
or the sister who died when we were babes, almost with 
minute distinctness ; and yet forget what happened the day 
before yesterday. How well we can remember the history of 
Jack Horner, and the adventures of the other Jack, who 
rose in life through the instrumentality of a bean-stalk ; and 
yet, how often we forget the matter of the first leader in the 
Morning JBeUotcer, before we have got half through the 
second one ! 

The subject of left-off garments has always been an 
interesting one to me, for it is fertile in the homely-pictu- 
resque. Yet there are many mysteries connected with 
the old clothes question ; which, though I have studied it 
somewhat profoundly, I am as yet unable to fathom. To 
what I do know, however, the reader is perfectly welcome 
to. 

The statistics of ancient habiliments have already been 
fully and admirably touched upon, in " another place," as 
honourable Members say. The aspect of Bag Fair, Cloth 
Pair, Petticoat Lane, and Holywell Street, have, moreover, 
been described over and over again ; so that my lay will be, 
perhaps, only an old song to a questionably new tune, after 
all. But there is nothing new under the sun to speak of, and 
to be entirely original would be, too, as out of the fashion, 
as it is out of my power to be so. 

Imprimis, of old clothesmen. Why should the Hebrew 
race appear to possess a monopoly in the purchase and sale of 



Old Clothes. 325 

dilapidated costume ? Why should their voices, and theirs 
alone, be employed in the constant iteration of the talismanic 
monosyllables " Old Clo' ? " In Glasgow, they say, the Irish 
have commenced the clothes trade, and have absolutely pushed 
the Jew clothesmen from their stools. I can scarcely believe 
so astonishing an assertion. I could as soon imagine an 
Israelitish life-guardsman as an Hibernian old clothesman. 
I can't — can you — can anybody — realise the strident, guttural 
tc Ogh Clo' " of the Hebrew, the mot d'ordre, the shibboleth, 
the password of the race, transposed into the mellifluous 
butter-milky notes of the sister isle ? 

My old clothesmen are all of the " people." Numerous 
are they, persevering, all-observant, astute, sagacious, voluble 
yet discreet, prudent and speculative. They avoid crowded 
main streets, and prefer shadier and quieter thoroughfarf-s. 
These do they perambulate indefatigably at all seasons, in all 
weathers. Lives there the man who ever saw an old clothes- 
man with an umbrella ? I mean using it for the purpose an 
umbrella is generally put to. He may have, and very pro- 
bably has, half-a-dozen in his bag, or somewhere about him, 
but never was he known to elevate one above his head. 

I am sorry to gird at an established idea, but duty com- 
pels me to do so. Artists generally represent the old clothes- 
man with three, and sometimes four, hats superposed one 
above the other. Now, though I have seen him with many 
hats in his hands or elsewhere, I never yet saw him with 
more than one hat on his head ; and I have been assured by 
a respectable member of the fraternity, with whom I lately 
transacted business, that the three-hat tradition has no 
foundation whatever ; in fact, that it is a mere device of 



326 Dutch Pictures. 

the enemy, as shallow a libel as the ballad of " Hugh of 
Lincoln," or the assertion that Jews cannot expectorate, but 
must, nolens volens, slobber. The three-hatted clothesman, 
if he ever existed, is obsolete ; but I incline to consider him 
a myth, an aesthetic pre-Kaphaelite abstraction, like the 
Sphinx, or the woman caressing her Chimsera. 

The old old clothesman is, I am sorry to say, becoming 
every day a swan of blacker hue. Young Israel has taken 
the field, and Old Jewry — old, bearded, gabardined, bent- 
backed Jewry is nearly extinct. It may be, perhaps, that 
after a certain age he abandons the bag, and laying in a large 
stock of crockery-ware, and vouchers for enormous sums, 
retires to the East, where he awaits the goods which the gods 
of diplomacy provide him. 

Very rarely now is this gabardine — that long, loose, 
shapeless garment, the game on which Antonio spat — to be 
seen in London streets. I recollect the time when nearly all 
the old clothesmen wore it, and I am certain my clothesman 
— the bogey of my childhood — was wont to be habited therein. 
Young Israel wears cut-away coats, and chains, and rings ; 
has eschewed the beard for the curl known as the aggravator, 
the chin tuft, and the luxuriant fringe of whisker ; carries the 
bag jauntily, not wearily and cumbrously, as Old Jewry did. 
But the inside is the same, the sagacity, the perseverance, the 
bargaining — oh ! the keen bargaining is as keen as ever. 

Then there is the bagless clothesman — the apparently bag- 
less one at lest — the marcJiand sans sac. You maybe in 
the street, and meet a gentleman attired in the first style 
of fashion, walking easily along, twirling his cane, and 
thinking, it would seem, of nothing at all. Passing him, you 



Old Clothes. 327 

catch his eye ; you find out that he has not got that piercing 
black eye, and that acutely aquiline nose, for nothing. He 
slides up to you, and in an insinuating sotto voce s something 
between a stage "aside" and an invitation to "buy a little 
da wg " from a Regent-street fancier, asks you the momentous 
question, "Have you anything to shell, sir?" 

The interrogatory may have been put in Kensington, and 
you may live at Mile-end ; but the bagless clothesman will 
not be deterred by any question of distance from accompany- 
ing you. He would walk by your side from Indus to the 
Pole, with that peculiar sidling, shumng gait of his, on the 
bare chance of the reversion of a single pair of pantaloons. 
And, should you so far yield to his seductive entreaties as to 
summon him to your domicile, he will produce, with magical 
rapidity, from some unknown receptacle, a bag — when, or 
where, or whence, or how obtained, it is not within the com- 
pass of human ken to know. 

A marvellous article is that bag. . It will hold everything 
and anything : always stuffed to repletion, it will hold more. 
The last straw, it has been aphoristically observed, breaks the 
camel's back; but trussess of trousers, stacks of paletots, 
ricks of waistcoats, thrust into this much-enduring bag, seem 
not to tax its powers of endurance to anything above a 
moderate degree. As to breaking the bag's back, it is far 
more likely that it would dislocate the dorsal vertebras of any 
novice bold enough to carry it than its own. 

A friend of mine met with a bagless clothesman on the 
Queen's highway, and in his habit as he lived. Being about 
to leave London, he acknowledged the soft impeachment of 
having a few old clothes to dispose of, and of which he 



328 Dutch Pictures. 

thought he might as well make a few shillings. Trousers » 
waistcoats, and coats were produced, and passed in review, 
and then my friend yielded to a Machiavelian suggestion of 
the clothesman relative to old boots. Remembering the 
existence of a decayed pair of Wellingtons under the 
parlour sofa, he descended to fetch them, leaving — infelix 
puer ! — the clothesman alone. He reascended : the usual 
chaffering, bickering, and eventual bargain-driving took place. 
The money agreed on was paid, and the clothesman departed. 
But — oh, duplicity of clothesmankind! — the nefarious Israelite 
had stuffed into his bag the only pair of evening dress con- 
tinuations my friend possessed. There was likewise a blue 
satin handkerchief with a white spot — what is popularly, I 
believe, known as a bird's-eye fogie — which was missing ; 
and though, of course, i" would not insinuate anything to the 
disadvantage of the carriers of the bag, the disappearance 
will be allowed to be strange. Mrs. Gumm, however, my 
friend's landlady (who has sheltered so many medical students 
beneath her roof that she may almost be considered a member 
of the profession, and who reads the " Lancet " on Sunday 
afternoons with quite a relish), Mrs. Gumm now stoutly avers 
that he did annex them ; declaring, in addition, her firm 
belief that he appropriated at the same time, and stowed away 
in his bag, a feather-bed of considerable size, and a miniature 
portrait of the Otaheitan chief who was supposed to have 
eaten a portion of Captain Cook : which portrait was pre- 
sented to her by the Eev. Fugue Trumpetstop, an earnest 
man, and now r minister of finance to King Kamehameha 
XXXIII. of the Sandwich Islands. I think that if there had 
been a chest of drawers or a four-post bed missing, the 



Old Clothes. 329 

dealer in worn out apparel would have been suspected as the 
spoliator. 

Carrying the bag, and crying " ogh clo ! " seems a sort of 
novitiate, or apprenticeship, which all Hebrews are subjected 
to. They can flesh their maiden swords in the streets, with- 
out its being at all considered derogatory. I please myself 
with the theory, sometimes, that of the millionn aires I see 
rolling by in carriages ; read of as giving magnificent balls 
and suppers; hear of as the pillars of commerce and the 
girders of public credit ; many have in their youth passed 
through the dusky probation of the bag. Keen chaffering 
about ragged paletots and threadbare trousers prepared them, 
finished them, gave them a sharper edge for the negotiation 
of the little bill and the sale of the undoubted specimens of 
the old masters. And from these to millions there were but 
few steps. There is a dear old dirty, frowsy, picturesque, 
muddy, ill -paved, worse-lighted, immensely rich old street in 
Prankfbrt, called the " Judengasse," a kind of compound of 
the worst parts of Duke Place and St. Mary Axe, and the 
best parts of Petticoat Lane, and Church Lane, St. Giles's. 
Here dwell the Jews of Frankfort — as dirty, as dingy, and as 
wealthy as their abiding-place. Departing at morn, and 
returning at eve, with the never-failing bag, you may see' the 
young Israelites. Sitting at the doors, smoking their pipes in 
tranquillity, are the patriarchs ; gossiping at the windows are 
the daughters of Judah, in robes of rainbow-hued silks or 
satins, but With under-garments of equivocal whiteness; 
sprawling in the gutters amidst old clothes, pots, pans, house- 
hold furniture, and offal, are the bright-eyed little children. 
I like much to walk in the Judengasse (after a good dinner 



33° Dutch Pictures. 

at the Hotel de Kussie), smoking the pipe of peace and Hun- 
garian tobacco ; glancing now at the old clothes, now at the 
clothesmen ; now at the little babies in the kennel — peeping 
cunningly at the heavy iron-stanchioned doors and the win- 
dows, protected at night (and for reasons, the rogues !) with 
iron-bound shutters. I conjecture how many colossal for- 
tunes have been made out of that shabby, grubby, ill-smell- 
ing old street. How many latent Kothschilds there may be 
in its back attics; how many Sampayos yet to come are 
sprawling in its kennels ! The discipline of the bag is well 
observed in the Judengasse, and prospers as it does every- 
where else. 

And this only brings me back to my starting point, and 
makes me perplexed, confused, bothered. Why should the 
Jews deal in old clothes ? Not only in London or Frankfort ; 
who has not heard the nasal chant of the Marchand d* habits 
in Paris, crying, " Vieux habits, vieux galons!" Who has 
not seen him bartering with the grisette for the sale of her 
last Carnival's Debardeur dress ? Who has not seen him 
slouching along, with a portion, of the said Debardeur dress, 
in the shape of a pair of black velvet trousers, hanging over 
his arm ; a pair of gold epaulettes sticking out of his coat- 
pocket ; a cavalry sabre tucked under his arm, and an advo- 
cate's robe protruding from his as usual crammed bag? 
Who have not heard of the Gibraltar old clothesmen, or of 
the fights on board the Levant steamers between the Greeks 
and the Jews, on disputed questions, relative to the value of 
cast-off caftans and burnouses ? I knew a young Turk once 
at Marseilles, who wore patent-leather boots, and perfumed 
himself indefatigably, but was not quite civilised for all that ; 



Old Clothes. 331 

for I remember making him a present of a large bottle of 
West India pickles, which, desiring him to taste, he ate, from 
the first Capsicum to the last Chili ; from the first to the last 
drop of the red-hot pickling vinegar, which he drank, all with- 
out one morsel of bread or meat ; smacking his lips mean- 
while, and saying, " Mi place, questo bastimento /" his usual 
expression when pleased. I remember asking him, when we 
were better acquainted, and he had acquired a more extended 
knowledge of the European languages, what were the charac- 
teristics of the Jews in Constantinople ? " They are dogs," 
he said, simply, " and wear yellow handkerchiefs, and ^70 about 
the streets of Stamboul selling old clothes" If in Turkey, 
why not in Persia, in Abyssinia, in Crim Tartary — everywhere? 
There is something more in it than is dreamt of in my philo- 
sophy. For aught I know, though I believe it without 
knowledge, the Jews of Honan in China, or the black Jews of 
India, may deal in cast-off wearing apparel. Every Jew, 
millionnaire as he may become afterwards, seems to begin 
with the bag. A fabulously rich Israelite of whom I know 
something, was once solicited for some favour by a poorer 
member of his tribe. He declined acceding to the applicant's 
request. " Ah ! " said his petitioner, spitefully (he was an 
ill-favoured old man, in a snuff-coloured coat, and a handker- 
chief tied round his head under his hat), " you're a very great 
man, no doubt, now ; but 1 recollect the time when you used 
to sell pocket-'handherchiefs in the public houses!" And so, no 
doubt, he had. 

Erom the sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step ; 
and from old clothesmen to old clothes there is but half a one. 
Let us consider old clothes. 



332 Dutch Pictures. 

Under which head, I beg to be understood, I include old 
hats, old boots, old linen, old anything, in fact, in which man 
delighteth to array himself. With the ladies (bless them !) 
I will not pretend, just now, to meddle ; they have their own 
distinctive old clothes dealers — their Revendeuses a la toilette^ 
their proprietors of shops where ladies' wardrobes are pur- 
chased. There are Eleusinian mysteries connected with this 
branch of the clothes trade ; dark stories of duchesses' white 
satin dresses, and dowager countesses' crimson velvet robes, 
about which I must have more certain information ere I dis- 
course thereon. To the uninitiated, the " Ladies' Wardrobe" 
is, as no doubt it is proper it should be, a mystery — a glim- 
mering haze of dusky little shops in back streets, pink silk 
stockings, white satin shoes, soiled ostrich feathers, ladies' 
maids, and ladies themselves, shawled and muffled, and with 
a cab waiting at the corner of the street. Fubsy women in 
printed gowns and aprons are dimly visible through the haze, 
sometimes ; and the tallyman has something mysteriously to 
do with the matter. I will inquire into it. 

But of the old clothes appertaining to the masculine 
gender. If you want to see old clothes and old clothesmen 
in their glory, go to Cloth Fair or the Clothes Exchange. 
You will have, to pay a small toll on entrance, towards the 
support of the building, but that is nothing. I should not so 
particularly advise you to take care of your pockets on this 
occasion ; but I should most decidedly caution you to take 
care of the clothes of which those pockets form a part ; for 
it is by no means improbable that half-a-dozen Jews will fall 
on you at once, and tug fiercely at your garments ; not with 
any bellicose intention, but simply with the understanding 



Old Clothes. 333 

that you must have something to sell ; and that, havin'g no 
bag, and being somewhat eccentric, you are actuated by a 
desire to sell the clothes you stand upright in. 

During the whole of the time the market lasts, one incessant 
series of pacific fights takes place. Rapidly, in twos and 
threes, sometimes by dozens and half-dozens, swarm in the 
clothesmen, who have been perambulating the streets since 
early morn. In a trice, on these erst buyers, now sellers, 
fall new buyers. What have they got to shell ? For Moses' 
shake, vat have they got to shell ? For all the Prophets's shake, 
give them the refusal ! Oh ! versh the bagsh ? Oh ! vat ish 
there in it ? Oh ! vat you vant ? Oh ! vat you give ? The 
gigantic bag is forcibly removed from the shoulders of the 
resisting clothesman ; it and he are tugged, hauled, hustled, 
jostled about. At last, he selects the merchant with whom 
he is desirous of doing business, and on that merchant's 
shopboard the multifarious contents of the wondrous bag 
will be vomited forth. Gracious ! will it never have done 
disgorging garments? More coats, more waistcoats, more 
continuations ; a shower of hats ; any quantities of pairs of 
boots, silk handkerchiefs, umbrellas, boys' caps, pattens ; and, 
sir, I am not exaggerating when I state, that this marvellous 
sack may, and has been very often known to, contain, and 
subsequently disgorge, such miscellaneous trifles as a few 
pounds of dripping, a birdcage, a live poodle, a theodolite, 
and an ormolu clock. All is fish that comes to the clothes- 
man's net — all clothes that come to his bag. He would buy 
your head if it were loose. 

On every merchant's shopboard similar heaps of hydra- 
natured garments are tumbling out of similar sacks. Then 



334 Dutch Pictures. 

ensues frantic yelling, screeching, lung-tearing, ear-piercing 
bargain-making. They gibber, they howl, they clutch each 
other fiercely, and grapple over a farthing like wolves. See 
yonder yellow-visaged old mercator, with salt rheum in his 
eye, and a beard like the beard of an insolvent goat, grown 
careless of his personal appearance. He is from Amsterdam, 
and can speak no English ; yet he gibbers, and clutches, and 
grapples with the keenest of his British brethren. He holds 
up his fingers to denote how much he will give, and no more. 
For Moses' sake, another finger ! S'help me, you 're robbing 
me ! S'help me, it's yoursh ! And the mercator has the 
best of the bargain, for your Jew, when a seller, is as loth to 
refuse money as he is, when a buyer, to part with it. 

Now the air is darkened with legs and arms of garments 
held up to be inspected as to their condition. The buyer 
pokes, and peers into, and detects naplessness, and spies out 
patches, and is aware of rents, and smells out black and 
blue reviver, and noses darns, and discovers torn linings ; the 
seller, meanwhile, watching every movement with lynx-eyed 
inquietude. A lull takes place — a very temporary lull, while 
this inspection is going on ; but only wait an instant, and 
you shall hear the howling, screeching, and see the clutching 
and grappling commence de novo. The air feels hot, and 
there is a fetid, squalid odour of rags. Jew boys stand in 
the midst of the market calling sweet-stuff and hot cakes for 
sale. Hark at Mammon and Gammon yelling at each other, 
browbeating, chaffering- in mutilated English and bastard 
Hebrew. They do make a great noise, certainly; but is 
there not a little buzz, a trifling hum of business in the area 
of the Eoyal Exchange just before the bell rings ? Does not 



Old Clothes. 335 

Capel Court resound sometimes to the swell of human voices ? 
Is not the immaculate Auction Mart itself occasionally any- 
thing but taciturn, when the advowson of a comfortable living- 
is to be sold ? We can make bargains, and noises about them, 
too, for other things besides old clothes. 

Look at that heap of old clothes — that Pelion upon Ossa 
of ostracised garments. A reflective mind will find homilies, 
satires, aphorisms, by the dozen — thought-food by the ton 
weight, in that pile of dress-offal. There is my lord's coat, 
bespattered by the golden mud on Fortune's highway; 
threadbare in the back with much bowing ; the embroidery 
tarnished, the spangles all blackened; a Monmouth Street 
laced coat. Eevivified, coaxed, and tickled into transitory 
splendour again, it may lend vicarious dignity to some High 
Chamberlain, or Stick-in- Waiting, at the court of the Em- 
peror Soulouque. There is a scarlet uniform coat, heavily 
embroidered, which, no doubt, has dazzled many a nursemaid 
in its day. It will shine at masquerades now ; or, perchance, 
be worn by Mr. Belton, of the Theatre Eoyal ; then emigrate, 
may be, and be the coat of office of the Commander-in-Chief 
of King Quashiboo's body-guard ; or, with the addition of a 
cocked hat and straps, form the coronation costume of King 
Quashiboo himself. And there is John the footman's coat, 
with ruder embroidery, but very like my lord's coat for all 
that. There, pell-mell, cheek by jowl, in as strange juxta- 
position, and as strange equality, as corpses in a plague-pit, 
are the groom's gaiters and my Lord Bishop's spatterdashes ; 
with, save the mark! poor Pat's ill-darned, many-holed 
brogues, his bell-crowned felt hat, his unmistakeable blue 
coat with the brass buttons, high in the collar, short in the 



336 Dutch Pictures. 

waist, long in the tails, and ragged all over. There is no 
distinction of ranks ; no precedence of rank, and rank alone, 
here. Patrick's brogues, if they were only sound and whole, 
instead of holey, would command a better price than my lord's 
torn black silk small clothes , yon groom's gaiters are worth 
double the episcopal spatterdashes ; and that rough fustian 
jacket would fetch more than the tattered dress-coat with 
only one sleeve, albeit 'twas made by Poole, and was once 
worn by Beau Smith. 

Where are the people, I wonder, to whom these clothes 
belonged ? Who will wear them next ? Will the episcopal 
spatterdashes grace the calves of a Low Church greengrocer? 
Will John the footman's coat be transferred to Sambo or 
Mungo, standing on cucumber-shinned extremities on the 
foot-board of a chariot belonging to some militia field- 
marshal or other star of the Upper Ten Thousand of New 
York 1 Who was John, and whose footman was he ? How 
many a weary mile the poor Jews have walked to get these 
sweepings of civilisation together, and make for a moment a 
muck-heap of fashion in Cloth Fair — a dunghill of vanity for 
chapmen to huckster over ! All the lies and the subterfuges 
of dress, the padded coats and whaleboned-waistcoats, the 
trousers that were patched in places where the skirts hid 
them, have come naked to this bankruptcy. The surtout 
that concealed the raggedness of the body-coat beneath ; the 
body-coat that buttoned over the shirtless chest ; the boots 
which were not Wellingtons, as in their strapped -down 
hypocrisy they pretended to be, but old Bluchers ; all are 
discovered, exposed, turned inside out, here. If the people 
who wore them could only be treated in the same manner — 



Old Clothes. 337 

what remarkably unpleasant things we should hear about one 
another, to be sure ! 

The Nemesis of Cloth Fair is impartial, unyielding, in- 
exorable. She has neither favourites nor partialities : a dress- 
coat — be it the choicest work of a Nugee or a Buck master 
— is to her an abomination, unless something can be made 
of it. She regardeth not a frock-coat, unless there is enough 
good cloth left in the skirts to make boys' caps of ; a military 
stripe down a pair of trousers has no charms in her eyes ; 
she is deaf to the voice of the embroidered vest, unless that, 
vest be in good condition. 

There are three orders of " Old Clothes," as regards the 
uses to which they may be applied : First class, clothes good 
enough to be revivered, tricked, polished, teased, re- napped, 
and sold, either as superior second-hand garments, in second- 
hand-shop streets, or pawned for as much as they will fetch, 
and more than they are worth. Second class, Old Clothes, 
which are good enough to be exported to Ireland, to Australia, 
and the Colonies generally. Great quantities are sent to the 
South American Republics ; and a considerably brisk trade 
in left-off wearing apparel is driven with that Great Northern 
Republic which asserts itself capable of inflicting corporal 
punishment on the whole of the universe. Wearing appared 
is unconscionably dear in the land of freedom, and the cheap 
" bucks " of the model republic cannot always afford bran- 
new broad-cloth. Third-class, or very Old Clothes 5 include 
those that are so miserably dilapidated, so utterly tattered 
and torn, that they would have been, I am sure, despised and 
rejected even by the indifferently- dressed man who married 
"the maiden all forlorn." These tatters — "haillom" the 

z 



338 Dutch Pictures. 

French call them — have a glorious destiny before them. 
Like the phoenix, they rise again from their ashes. Torn to 
pieces by a machine, aptly called a " devil," in grim, brick 
factories, northwards, they are ground, pounded, tortured into 
" devil's dust," or " shoddy ; " by a magic process, and the ad- 
mixture of a little fresh wool, they burst into broadcloth again. 
I need say no more. When I speak of broadcloth and 
" devil's dust," my acute readers will know as much about 
it as I do : plate- glass-shops, middlemen, sweaters, cheap 
clothes, and nasty. Who shall say' that the Marquis of 
Camberwell's footman — those cocked-hatted, bouquetted, silk- 
stockinged Titans — may not have, in their gorgeous cos- 
tume, a considerable spice of Patrick the bog-trotter's ragged 
breeches, and Luke the Labourer's fustain jucket ? 

We have traditions and superstitions about almost every- 
thing in life, from the hogs in the Hampstead sewers to the 
ghosts in a shut-up house. There are traditions and super- 
stitions about old clothes. Fables of marvellous sums found 
in the pockets of left-off garments are current especially 
among the lower orders. There was the Irish gentleman 
who found his waistcoat lined throughout with bank-notes ; 
and the youth who discovered that all the buttons on a coat 
he had bought in Petticoat Lane, were sovereigns covered with 
cloth. Then there was Mary Jenkins who, in the words of 
the Public Advertiser, of February 14th, 1750, "deals in old 
clothes in Rag Fair, and sold a pair of breeches to a poor 
woman for sevenpence and a pint of beer. While they were 
drinking it in a public house, the purchaser, in unripping 
the breeches, found, quilted in the waistband, eleven guineas 
in gold — Queen Anne's coin, and a thirty pound bank-note 



Old Clothes, 339 

dated 1729 ; which last she did not know the value of, till 
she had sold it for a gallon of twopenny purl." There are 
so many stories of this sort about, in old newspapers and in 
old gossips' mouths, that a man, however credulous, is apt 
to suspect that a fair majority of them may be apocryphal. 
There is a tinge of superstition ill the connection of money 
or fortune with clothes. Don't they put sixpence into a little 
boy's pocket, when he is first indued with pantaloons 
the toga virilis of youthful Britons ? Don't we say that a 
halfpenny with a cross on it will keep the deuce out of our 
pockets ? Don't we throw old shoes after a person for luck ? 
and what is luck but money ? 




LONDON: 
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